everytime i get the apartment to myself

photo: kiyong jumli



I don't really know how I got here but here I am
drowning in pointless pussy.


by Kristine Kaye Antonio

I seem to be having a hard time writing at the moment. It could be because I haven't been drinking for a while now. I'm on medication for my tonsilitis and I just don't think it's a good idea to mix antibiotics with alcohol. So here I am forcing words out of my head before I run out of excuses. For the entire week I could not construct anything. Not even a goddamn predicate. I need pot. I haven't smoked the green substance since April and for some reason I am not looking forward to be reunited with it either. Everytime I get the apartment alone to myself, I drink. These days, I prefer to get inebriated by myself. Somehow getting inside my head is more interesting than drinking with my drinking-friends and listen to their worthless, banal monologues. Theirs is trivial compared to my mine.

I don't remember the exact moment how everything changed, I just know it did. In the land of lotus eaters, time plays tricks on you. One moment you are dreaming, the next your dreams have become your reality. I don't really know how I got here but here I am drowning in pointless pussy. I exiled myself leaving behind an engagement I wanted to nurture. Then I flashed forward and now I break mainly because I cannot imagine you speaking of me with some affection and longing. But how can you now? Your lover is a child in an adult's body, caring for nothing and everything at the same time. Noble in thought, weak in heart.

Of dyke shoes and pneumonia

Left des hommes office in a foul mood, the sub-office girl acting out her pettier side, having a buyers’ remorse over a fifty pesos purchase of print material I made her pay. I took down the anti-feminist poster they hung at the boss’ door, a shameless suck-up to big daddy (big daddies, rather: there are two, the white man, and the wog) by some whore in the workplace. The office sec tried to stop me, nicely, the niceness almost succeeding in making me feel guilty. Weren’t they hospitable people by all means and by all appearances with a heap of grievance against my impudences? I rolled up the canvass poster, wanting to rip in the middle Nancy Smith’s womanhood, from the bottom up. It was an effort to stride briskly out of the office and into the asphalted road aboard my cousin’s ship-size leather shoes.

My cousin in the army stole my dyke shoes and replaced it with a second-hand which he rather grew tired of. Bastard, how I kept on cursing, all day long, having thanked the old couple his parents who were tasked to talk me into taking his shoes. May he slip on it, may it never fit, I kept on praying, missing his sister my friend and her gift of feet. Knowing I am once more broken-hearted, she sent me a brand new dyke shoes, the right oversize, and he is wearing them, my manhood stolen and strutted out. I can imagine him bragging to his pals in the army. It belongs to my commie cousin just home from cuba the ungrateful bitch who would not give. I know I should have not accepted it but my auntie, who was now 70 and a little shamefaced about crimes committed against daughters slaving it out in HK, was anxious not to be found out. So I pretended I didn’t know, for people after all are not supposed to care about dykes whose obsessions begin and end with shoes. Jealous they all are that the daughter sister would support my faith in my life and hers against all family advice and would still be sending something expensively special for me when graces for them dropped low since the day she found out.

I wore it anyway, like I take it all, all, the insults the injuries my friends and family alone can gift me with, because the way I live hurts, betrays them. Denies them the pleasure of making me take, take from them what they want to give me shove down my ass. Wearing the pair hurts, like one was walking on loose hinges. Then on my way to buy a ticket a downpour had me stranded. Water rose ankle-deep. The friend at the travel agency was close to screaming, am I paying for my ticket or not, am I flying or cancelling it altogether. I walked into the waters angry at the world always playing a bad joke at good good me. To my surprise, the cousin’s discarded shoes kept me dry. And Nancy Smith’s canvas poster, how helpful it made itself for me, like that was all the service she really owed every woman who didn’t like her little piece of mind: save their heads at least from getting wet in the rain that they may not die of pneumonia.


21 july 2011

Wassalam, Jolo

photo: MM Jumadil






My Kerala is how Germelina put it. Romancing that shitload of an island. Hey Germelina, Kerala is way up there in my political imaginary, green fields, windmills of hope, women in their right minds, something Arundhati Roy only hinted at in her novel, and who knows, I may actually be all wrong.

Maybe my Calcutta? But I don’t claim it as mine. And I’ve never been to Calcutta either, so I don’t know the place, how could I compare. It doesn’t flood much too often in Calcutta, does it? And no gang rapes?

Now the crazies in the island are still dreaming up sultanate and royal families, some thinking they are royalty, not me, makes me wonder if I am the one out of touch with reality.

The way I understand it, I had no permission. Last time I went I had to be presented to so many principalities I would otherwise not pay homage too, had I the choice. The dress is not my strongest suit, says Aida the musical, so I kept on bumping into the wrong tree. One mistake led to another, and somehow out of the so many mistakes, something kept on turning and turning into another thing like some wonderful widening gyre.

Dear Jolo, Salam to you Old Friend.

The rain in Spain is only on the plain

Today at the bank. i caught LT flirting with the clerk. i felt like sniggering. Hihihi the old cow. Likes her things young! But how humanly possible she looked.

Maybe she was not really flirting. Just taking time to converse with girls a little awed by her money. She looks an old boy almost past her time at it. Like she’s got a wife and children at home who don’t know and stopped really caring where she put her dick now. The clerk was smiling, tense, like being flirted with by a lesbian is something she finds extremely flattering and will never know the handle of. Because LT was discussing to her things like players in the financial market and bail-out, like she were a friend already she can talk business with, stuff she really didn't give much thought, she’s just there on a job. She glanced my way, LT, and had a two-sec pause. I made out like I did not see or recognize her. I actually was filling out a withdrawal slip and I wanted to scream because my account was about clean, but there she was the rich bastard cold bitch of an old girl grateful that I didn’t remember she it was whom I called stupid policy in her own office before all her slaves.

06 july 2011

At the workshops

photo: from sawi



Sometimes this is what they tell young writers: that man does not live by words alone, he has to make bread too.

I find it very unsettling. The spectre of the starving artist conjured up like a scarecrow by old men who fear only a day without food. So art can't be larger than life? Sure, even a writer has to stand in line at the bread queue, but what does she say before she gets there?

It sounds to me like a paean to mediocrity.

Salamat Kuya

photo: pinoy estacio




ni Ramille Andag

Dear Kuya: Sabi mo na-misplace lang yung TV sa bahay. Kanina nakita ko ang papel de ahensiya. Alam ko namang ginawa mo yun for safekeeping purposes. Uso kasi ang nakawan ngayon sa ating neighborhood. Salamat, Kuya.

Edwin M. Salonga: Ang motorsiklo, naibalik na ba ki Kuya?

Kaici Sanchez: Miss u Mader Ramil. . .

Ramille: Ay Edwin, sabi niya naka impound sa LTO, di lang daw niya matandaan kung saan specifically. Pero feeling ko for safekeeping purposes din. Wala kasing parking sa amin.

Edwin M. Salonga: Pantas! Napakabait talaga ni Kuya. Buti na lang ang phone at laptop mo, katabi mo lagi kahit sa pagtulog. Baka kasi next time na malingat ka, naipa-safekeep na rin ni kuya.

Ramille: Sabi ni Kuya hindi daw worthy na i- safekeep kasi medyo old models na daw ang dalawang items na yun. Bongga talaga si Kuya, may expertise sa gadgets.

Nathaniel Nicart Doligon: Hahaha! Loko yan si Kuya ah!

Edwin M. Salonga: Haha. Ayos! Sabagay, may logic ang explanation ni Kuya. Kumusta naman ang pera mo sa wallet?

Ramille: Ay yung sa pera, alam mo namang color blind ako at mathematically challenged. Feeling ko laging mali ang pagbibilang ko, so mali ang baseline.

Edwin M. Salonga: Sabagay. Kaya pala ang dalas mong mag-withdraw. Baka naman ang iniisip ni Kuya, siya na bahala sa savings at investments ninyo. Long-term planning! Iba talaga si Kuya.

Ramille: Win si Kuya ano?

Edwin M. Salonga: Siya na nga talaga. Kayo na. Lock and key kayo. For that, lucky ang relationship ninyo.

Ramille: True ano? OMG! I feel so warm and fuzzy with that thought! Hahahahahaha

Kaici Sanchez: Eh sino yung kasama ni Kuya sa kama kanina? Sabi niya pinsan daw niya? Saang side? Mother side o father side? In fairness borta yun ah.

Edwin M. Salonga: Haha. Pinsan talaga iyon ni Kuya. Iyong isa kasi, pamangkin naman daw niya. Close lang talaga sila kaya ganoon. Sanay silang sa iisang kama natutulog, mula bata pa.

Kaici Sanchez: Sana pala kasabay ko din sila tumanda! Hahaha para nakapagbahay-bahayan din kame nila Kuya. . .

Ramille: Oo, nakasanayan lang talaga nila yun.

Sheilfa: Ramille, may i syndicate this exchange?

Gerald Ferrer: Di ako sure Ma'am, pero si Kuya parang member ng lipat-bahay gang. Nakabili ka na ba ng bahay at unti-unti niyang hinahahkot gamit mo?

Edwin M Salonga: Haha. Baka naman surprise iyon ni Kuya para kay Camille. Bagong bahay, kaya sinimulan na lipat ng gamit.

Ramille to Juliet: Ma'am nakita ko na ang bahay. Bongga! Ang taray ng lighting, tapos may security guard. May nakasulat Villarica Pawnshop.

Donita Culala Tenorio-Roberts: Ahahaha nasanla talaga?

Nest Zamora Lucas: Ay Ma'am nasa palamigan lang daw ang tv at motor. Nag-overheat e.

Bohn Benedict Vergara: HAHAHA. Ang peste ng sharing na ito... SWEAR!

Ramille: Pero mga Ma'am, maliwanag talaga! Maganda ang blue ba color sa malalaking letra na VP.

Ihna Figueroa: Sistah, nakilala ko na si Kuya, di ba? Yung nagkita tayo sa BPI tapos nakamotorsiklo ka niya na sinundo? Hala, talagang masinop si Kuya pala!! Kung di sa bangko, andoon, nasa isang bahay safekeeping!!