Looking for Jose for Dummies 2.0

The girl with the pearl earring was staring back at me and all I could do was let out a silent fart out of excitement and pure bliss. Crowded around her were people from every nook and cranny of Japan led by a deranged woman busily pointing out the cracks on the surface of the painting. I swear somebody said something like sashimi or sushi.

We were at the Mauritshuis in The Hague where the Girl With the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer (also called the Mona Lisa of the North…I mean the painting, not Vermeer) was being housed temporarily for an exhibit of Vermeeer’s works while he was in Austria. He was originally from Delft, a quaint little town bombarded these days by noisy tourists.

I was expecting a huge wall of a face to stare back at me. But after minutes of milling around the circle of the Japanese tourists, I was surprised to see the 40 x 46 cm masterpiece. I dunno. There was something in that pic. Too bad the hype is on Mona Lisa and the movie with Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson did not do much publicity for the painting. Well, I guess it doesnt need any publicity.

Dunno what to say, really. So I just glued her on my desktop.

Although still missing two million pesos in my bank account, I was able to snatch a copy of Zafra’s seventh. And I wish I bought a damn bath towel instead.

Always loved Jessica Zafra. Once, I saw her reading a book the size of the 1924 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia I unearthed somewhere (if you have no clue what I am talking about, the book was profanely massive) at the Powerbooks store in Greenbelt, I panicked and ordered an entire army of the bookstore’s employees to dig me a copy of the Womenagerie book (the only Zafra I didn’t have back then). Two harassed ladies clad in the most despicable shade of yellow pounded on their computers to search for a copy and told me with the look of resignation that they have only two copies left but they did not have a clue where the books were.

Of course, I did not accept defeat. I insisted on having that book so I could have the coffee gulping diva downstairs anoint it for me. Finally, a copy was recovered behind a pretentious NCLEX review book and I had it punched right away.

Wait. I did not have a pen. How much does this one cost? A hundred twenty pesos?!?!?! You’re out of your freaking mind! I could see the woman smirking. I shelled out an extra 120 pesos for the pen with silly monkeys cavorting with huge elephants drawn all over it.

As I would approach Kali, I prepared to be eaten alive. Should I say, hello Jess, can I have an autograph? No, she hates being called Jess. Uhm…how about, hi…would you sign this for me? In a whisper. She stared at me and said, sure. What’s your name. I gave my name. Did not spell it. Just gave it. She spelled my name right. I was ecstatic.

If only Tw7sted could be as ecstasy-inducing. No surprises. The same good old drivel. But I won’t buy a 120 pesos pen for this one.

The bitch did not look so much as just another person who happened to have an access to an atm but when I punched my own card in, I was blown away by the figures she must have intentionally left for me to salivate on.

Two fucking million five hundred eighty-five fucking thousand three fucking hundred sixty damn pesos.

My knees felt weak and I quickly developed an insanely high fever while my heart did a terrible job at breaking free off my chest. Thoughts, as they would, raced through my mind, making me dizzy. Numbers usually do. Add to it the peso sign and I will be hyperventilating.

I have always suspected that some people, in fact, millions of people on earth have more than what I have in the bank and that a single automated teller machine could hold more than what i can probably earn in a lifetime. I have seen people on tv who woke up that day 8 million pesos poorer and went home on a kidnap list. And so I dreamed of hitting it big with quiz shows–a nice possibility except that I hate the kliegs melting me and so far, no quick show host is tolerable enough for me to endure a shoot with. I have answered several jackpot questions right including one in Dutch “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” and Anne Robinson’s “The Weakest Link”. Yeah, I brag.

I don’t have an idea how that woman could have gotten such money stashed in her account. Maybe she has more. She did not look like she was born filthy rich (i.e. no visible evidence of recent exfoliation, pink shirt clearly from Divisoria, toenails screaming for a good wash, etc) and nor did she look like a quiz show winner so I thought that she must have acquired the money from keeping submarines perfectly dry while under the sea.

With two million bucks, I’d buy a nano and fill it with Coldplay and Bjork and Regina Spektor. I’d probably also drop by McDonald’s and get a Big Mac or get Jessica’s seventh.I would get myself a new bath towel cause the one I am using is threadbare. Then, buy a new tv so I could watch Conan without just hearing him. But then, I don’t have two million bucks. Yet.

I am missing a woman.

She did not have her left breast after a nasty bout with breast cancer. If you searched carefully, a carefully folded handkerchief became her pseudo-mammary gland. She was proud of the scar, though.

To save some of her children’s clothes, she braved a raging fire that turned the whole house into a huge pile of ashes. One day in our garden, she showed me the plant that cured the burns.

She told me stories. There was the guy from the mountains who kept counting the woods he chopped, always convinced that he’s missing some. I forgot how the story ended.

I am wearing a bonnet she skillfully knitted. The balls of yarn she used were scraps but still, she managed to make it look good for me to wear as I was about to do some mountain trekking.

She was one hell of a kitchen diva. She turned simple grubs into great dishes. She even made cow brain patties taste awesome, though it took some time for everybody to get acquainted to the fact that we were eating neurons and well, brain.

Her basket always dripped of barbecue juices when she comes home at night from her shop at the public market. She knew I loved barbecue and never forgot to bring me some every night.

She was beautiful. Even though she was old, nobody failed to notice her beautiful nose. She was small, but never frail.

She survived a turbulent marriage and was able to put six children through universities. And many more students who were nice enough to ask for help.

She told me she loved me while she was on her deathbed.

And I keep missing my mother’s mom.

Ever dreamt of rushing to the toilet in the middle of the night while your bowels are screaming to let go of shit you have been so preciously carrying inside you for years? I had lots of dreams like those when I was a kid and thankfully, they all ended up without the whole family waking up to drive out evil spirits in the shape of poo out of my room. Now, imagine all these happening without you having to hit the sack first.

You have been there before.

I was in the second grade and was thankfully acuqainted to a snotty kid who could keep secrets until high school. It happened a couple of times and on both occasions, my friend ended up running to their house, red in the face and probably cursing me. We were in the middle of our civics class, pointing out hazy pictures of people cleaning the streets, policemen pushing old ladies towards the running vehicles (well, it looked that way to me) and children perpetually being nice to people who looked like kidnappers. I stood up and went straight to our teacher, Miss D156 (she looked 156 to me) and told her I wanted to poo.

A flickering 10-watt bulb appeared beside her head and told me that I should go straight home and relieve myself. I was eight that time and never protested so I could use any of the functional 40 toilets we had in the whole school (each classroom had a toilet aside from the communal four). She also insisted that I bring with me Odie, the flamingly budding gay kid because we lived near each other and could therefore run to my mom should somehow I explode with shit all over the streets while we walked home.

Fully resigned to my teacher’s idea, Odie and I started our 15-minute trek back home. If you’re bursting with shit and given 15 minutes to run for cover, you would not think of anything else but getting there within the same second you were given the suggestion. So we walked home, while Odie was busy singing Manilyn Reynes and I, tightly clamping my butt to stop the inevitable.

At about twenty meters away from our house, came the explosion…or, the trickle, I should say.

Odie panicked and ran to my mom who was putting out the laundry in our backyard. She came running with my aunt who was there to visit us and saw me desperately looking for a weapon to kill myself from embarassment. The look on my mom’s face was quite unexpected. She desperately wanted to disown me, I thought. Then, she told me to run to our house and started laughing there in the middle of the street. Later she told me that I looked like a wee boy full of shit. I was.

And will always be.