What I Saw at the Neighbors’ Across the Alley
If you ever piously claim that you were never curious about the goings on at your neighbors’ I’ll bet you’ve got a terribly long and ugly nose! This deserves a brief background though (for my part of the tale, that is). By age 12 I already lost count how many times I ran away from home!
Yup, running away was my ultimate solution to problems I wasn’t willing to solve or situations I
was incapable of changing. Orphaned at 9, my second mother was my Aunt Pilar (now resting in
peace in Poughkeepsie, New York). She was a lesbian (I didnt mind that, of course, since we
were both of the same flesh and blood) but her partner, in today’s parlance, was a piece of broken works (now that’s murdering the idiom, isn’t it?). The latter was one big mama who brooked no disobedience or nonobservance of her rules.
Well, suffice it to say that since Mother died, I learned (prematurely, I suppose) the benefits of
independence by living mostly out in the streets and just coming home to freshen up with a quick
shower and a change of clothes. But when Aunt Pilar took me with her to live in Malabon (town 10 miles north of Manila) little did I know my stay with her and her lover would be a test of my “mettle” when the latter appointed me the official houseboy in her household. Anyway, after one of the many confrontations with my aunt’s lover (i.e. while I retreated she confronted me) I decided to pack up and fly away. My objective was the home of Aunt Pacing (Mother’s cousin) in Sampaloc. I should point out that at this part of my narrative, Aunt Pacing became my second surrogate mother (next to Aunt Pilar).
Life with her was almost like life with Mother for Aunt Pacing spoiled me no end. The only rule
she imposed was that I take a bath before going to bed. Fair enough, considering I had spent the
entire afternoon playing with the kids in the neighborhood. This was just after WW II ended and
neither Nintendo nor XBox existed yet. My games were pure physical fun: running, skipping
rope, catching tadpoles and raiding guava orchards.
Then the boom came down. Mother’s halfbrother, Fernando, discovered my whereabouts and
took me to live with him in his apartment. He was still a bachelor and you can imagine the
hygienic condition of his 2-bedroom pad located in an alley on Rizal Avenue. I didn’t mind
tidying up the place since it was so compact I hardly spent more than 15 minutes sweeping the
floors and dusting off the furniture. After that mini chore it was play all day. That is, until I got
intrigued by the number of GI’s visiting the apartment across my uncle’s apartment. A more
detailed observation revealed the presence of many women in the apartment who, by some
cosmetic aberration, seemed to look alike in many respects: thick facial make up, thick red lips,
thick pencilled eyebrows, thick black hair and very dark skin.
So there you have a graphic description of a racial cocktail composed of Caucasians with red,
brown, blonde and black hair mingling with the olives I just described above. And where was
Uncle Fernando during my scholarly activities? He was away the whole day working as a
salesman for Singer.
Ever the inquisitive type (this must be genetic) I continued observing my environment and taking
down notes. As the day went by the volume of the cocktail downstairs (in the apartment across, that is) decreased until just a pair of olives was left to wait for more GI’s. One day, I decided to go upstairs and observe the world from a higher vantage point my uncle’s window which had a full view of the second level of the apartment across. As luck would have it their windows were wide open!
Surprise! The Caucasian birds were lolling around and having fun with the brown olives! What I
saw solidly confirmed what I’d suspected all along: that birds and bees absolutely have nothing
to do with Adam and Eve’s assignment to populate Earth! I was bound to earn a PhD in many
disciplines for free! But all good things come to an end... or, to put it another way, no good deed
goes unrewarded. Aunt Pilar tracked me and she suddenly aborted my doctorate pursuit and
heaped the Spanish equivalent of English 4-letter words on her brother! The curses and epithets
Uncle Fernando got were well delivered when Aunt Pilar found out I waited for GI’s at the corner
and pointed them to the olives in the alley for which effort I was rewarded with chewing gum and
cigarettes!
To cut the story short, I was back in Malabon again. Once more I was the houseboy for my
aunt’s lover! There must be an Irish blessing I can throw at her while she burns in hell! If not, I'll settle for a fatwah/
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