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Heartburn
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TITLE (EDIT)
Heartburn |
DESCRIPTION
Love Allergy anyone? Here's a comic take on a love phobic.
[1,430 words] |
TITLE KEYWORD
Literary Fiction |
AUTHOR
CalbayR |
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
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[March 2001] |
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (1)
The Blue Insomnia (Short Stories) A young man figures out his sad end as nobody's care and memory. [1,916 words] [Literary Fiction]
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Heartburn
CalbayR
WHARLY FORGOT to shave that day. He was queasy because he never forgot such scheduled routines as shaving his chin and that space in the upper lip every Monday morning after he brushed his teeth before going to school. And now, he tries to remember if indeed he brushed his teeth.
He couldn’t decide whether to head back to his apartment or rush to the jeepney station, he would be late once more for Montalban’s History of Western Civ. class. He was certain he would get the axe for a “failure due to absences”, the sadist professor he had.
Catching up to his quick pace, panting heavily, was his roommate Ben. Ben was wearing an ill-fitted beige long sleeved shirt (too goddamn tight)—his excess pounds were bulging repulsively, paired with tailored jeans. Come to think of it, all of Ben’s pants and even most of his shirts were tailor-made because he is so huge, elephant-huge. Wharly on the other hand, was plainly dressed in a black polo shirt, the exact black polo shirt he wore three months ago in an aunt’s funeral matched with khaki pants.
While the two guys rushed to the main road to catch a jeepney ride, a white, scrawny street cat fell—or did it jumped—in the manhole that was left by sewerage workers open, waiting like a hungry mouth at the intersection of Morayta Street and C.M. Recto Avenue for the passerby’s.
Wharly anticipated whether the cat would resurface or not. What if he fell in that hole too, in that black hole, what if he was the cat, would he really be directed to the icky Manila Bay as rumored or would he be floating in the metaphysical Dead Sea of Shit he always believed our universe floats?
During one the Great Floods of the rainy season, a high school girl was reported to have fallen in a manhole and was found black and rotting, floating in the Manila Bay a week after. Wharly shrugged the thought, goosebumps rallied suddenly on his nape. Shit happens, he thought.
It was miraculous that the two guys found a jeepney not yet crumbling with people and therefore they were able to put their asses on decent seats. Rush hours made people sprout on the whole stretch of Recto. It is always a struggle to get a decent seat on a jeepney these days and one must master the art of crashing with the crowd, Wharly understood.
Ben made a sign of the cross before they entered the dilapidated vehicle, yet you will wonder how he did it.
Wharly envied Ben as they sat in the jeepney. There he was, the ever oh-so-pious St. Benedict praying his rosary, reciting the joyful mysteries (or was it?) of the Blessed Virgin Mary because it was a Monday, eyes closed, uncaring of the harsh sun or the belch of vehicles. But Ben is, too…too overly oily that he could be mistaken for Saudi Arabia. If Ben looked like anything desirable ever, it would be because he’s like a mouth-watering, cholesterol-pumping, heart attack-triggering lechon.
But Wharly always liked Ben, as pseudo-friend of course. He found him cute because he was fat and Chinese—he liked him that way, however fallacious the logic, however non sequitur the reasoning seemed.
Secretly and consistently, he tried brainwashing his pseudo-friend to release him from his so square, so straight reality frame. Ben’s brain could be as square as a ten kilobyte diskette, whose capacity he misused by memorizing Shakespearean lines and sonnets, and of course, the novenas, petitions and prayers to almost three dozen saints he kept in touch with. He never ever failed to attend the Friday and Sunday masses at the Baclaran and Quiapo churches respectively, to say bless us oh lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive before taking whatever food in his dastardly mouth, end a text message with a god-bless-you-and-god-loves-you-fucking-variety and other extreme religiosity that he should have entered the university seminary than be enrolled in the Liberal Arts.
Wharly and Ben are classmates as Political Science majors, both intending to whore themselves to law school to study, and maybe exonerate the rottenness of the justice system one-day, if ever. It occurred on Wharly that Ben was already calling on for the jeepney driver to stop, as they already passed over the main gate of the University.
Back on his wits, Wharly forgot about Ben as he darted, rushing to their class building, striding and balling on his way until he bumped on Anna. The Anna was this girl fat in the proper places who expected all living things to kowtow before her presence, although she was no raving beauty at all. The girl uttered “fuck” or something and made this nasty hmmmph-ing sound coupled with eyes flying from one to the other side as she picked up the two books that fell from her arms on the newly waxed, indeed very slippery, floor.
With his goody-goody-boy-look, hair cut short patterned from the National Hero’s hairdo and a fashion statement that is as safe and classic as that of high-class security guards’ to some friggin’ politico, nobody would ever treat him as rudely as that. Then why that girl?
“Is there any problem?,” he asked, wryly.
“Problem my ass,” she said. As to whether Wharly ever got to attend his history class that he so desperately needed to do after that, I don’t know. All as they say, is history. (Straighten your story up, you writer! I hear you think)
You know, Wharly is a non-believer, or so he claims, of Love. He confined himself in his anti-social battle-shell—-no swooning girl would intrude that. He is an abiding Marxist/Communist/Nihilist who, by heart, brain, liver, gall bladder, kidney stones, esophagus, defied and defiled the society’s ideal for him, at nineteen, to have, at least, a steady.
There was this girl called Pen-pen who would salivate, gyrate, and hyperventilate whenever she saw Wharly that on his part he always felt in dire need to bath after being eyed by the freak. He felt that he has every right to cane the girl to death. But Anna was a strange case. Strange case, a hard one to crack at that indeed for Wharly always wilted in her presence.
It was not cowardice or chicken-ness that Wharly, sure of his sexual preference, does not wanted a girlfriend. It could well be blamed to Parsimony, that wonderful word he learned, in fact the only new thing he ever learned from his balding Psychology Professor. Parsimony states that people have the tendency to want the easier way in, or was it out of, Life.
Wharly, the stingy young man that he was, couldn’t afford a love relationship, an affair. There is so much energy, so much time, really so much money to be involved, that he cannot offer, because he is no sucker, at least for now.
He detested the idea that he would have a permanent eating, movie watching, even walking date and mate, phone, pen, text, and e-mail gal. All sorts of demands made him retch, because demands have the power to make him guilty or whatever.
But really, this toughie on the outside is a softie in that inside crevice beneath the skull called the Hypothalamus, Electric Chair of Goddamned Emotions.
So that night, while surfing gigantic search engine Yahoo!(opposite of his current state of mind), totally ignoring his friend Ben’s plea that annoyed him to death to first send rotten St. Judas-chain-letters to people, even to Anna, the mouse dragged him to the messenger. His fingers were itchy to type the basest three words prone to abuse and misuse. Because he couldn’t contain the force within, he typed the words—bold, underlined, and italicized, intending to send it to the lady.
Shit happens, he thought. He clutched at his shirt, wrinkling it the more. It was hard to breathe. As if he’s taking in water, as if he’s drowning.
He tried to inhale very, very deeply but even before he exhaled, something in his brain, perhaps a synaptic lapse, triggered canned laughter, canned, haunting laughter resounding in the background, getting louder and louder.
The cursor impatiently blinks at the end of the words he just typed. His pupils dilated, his heart’s beating stopped for a second or two. He feared that something, something white and purring, something wild like a cat, would jump off from inside him, rip open his chest.
He clutched at his chest. It was still very difficult to breathe.
With all his strength now, his hand dragged the mouse to highlight the words, and change the fonts to Wingdings.
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2003 CalbayR |
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
September 2003 |
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
2985
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