a beer. toast.
grew up in general santos city, where there are more tunas than pretty whores to waste your money on. so, when visiting my city, don’t wish to get laid. go to santiago boulevard. order tuna hot off the grill and drink and be merry. you may not die after all, as they say.
last time i was in gensan was about three long years ago. i had a small, green knapsack on my back and a black mailman’s bag slung across my shoulder and the guts to leave the city whose streets i know like every fruit you shouldn’t see in a bowl of fruit salad. february of that same year saw me being devastated by the loss of a woman who cooked cow-brain patties so well. not only that, while my mother’s mother was lying in coma, they burned kimball plaza down. the grief was too much to bear, especially to those who existed on the store’s fresh breads at the ground floor. along with the conflagration went the popular belief that it housed a man-snake who ate fair-skinned shoppers who later on pass through its digestive track as bars of gold.
i was there when they bombed fitmart. well, sort of. i was eating my cheese muffin and staring at my second cup of dunkin’ donuts coffee in pioneer avenue when we heard the blast. after a few minutes, i saw a woman without her shoes on dragging a little boy behind her. she was nearly hysterical and told me bits of what happened at the department store. my friend dinah’s father died that afternoon. and also roy’s mother and father. the blast broke the glass windows of my favorite cafe just in front of the store.
i danced on the streets of gensan. i marched on her streets, carrying my high school’s banner. i got drunk in a small bar along roxas ave. i got even more drunk and had fun at santiago boulevard. i miss the garlic spaghetti from giacomino’s.
the library beside the oval plaza was my sanctuary. it provided me a good escape from the noise of a hundred tricycles that plied every nook of the city. crown book store along roxas ave made me wish i had money to buy all the books wrapped in sticky plastic sheets, waiting to be devoured. their xerox was excellent.
jo-ann’s along pedro acharon boulevard and the golden silangan bakeshop provided me my fix of palabok and egg pie. kcc’s fastfood never failed to amaze me with their coleslaw. did not eat a lot at gaisano though.
always had fun at tropicana’s. one morning, after a whole night’s worth of soaking up the waters of sarangani bay, we belted out our own version of bon jovi’s ‘it’s my life’. he would have hated it, but it was saved by rassey’s guitar.
dunno when i will be home again. but then, when i get back there, i will play cheer’s theme and drink a bottle of san mig. and toast to old times.
*photo from http://www.philippinebusiness.com.ph/geographics/gensan.htm
