Third day
Third Day
I bathe at every sweltering afternoon, right at the end of Willie of Fortune and its contestants toting goody bags of food supplements purported to restore failing health and to keep optimum body functions. What these people endure is the basest of bare-faced capitalist exploitation in exchange of their stories that they never thought to have contained commercial value, their lives that are miserable as they already were, in exchange of hugs that are nearly insincere and the specter of thousands of pesos at achieving maximal melodramatic vulgarity. Consent, however, has the power to default the evident capitalist oppression. Commoditization of poverty beefs up ratings, and ironically to perpetuate poverty to keep stories coming. Ito’y para sa inyo, sa kinabukasan niyo.
My father though finds hilarity of it all and I strongly suspect he does not see anything wrong. And, when there’s only one TV set whose tantrum includes dwindling its reception to only one channel, there is no way I can remain impervious. Soon I find myself captive of the witless humor, bigoted antics and platitudes about facing the odds of life by the limited means which the poor, the laundry-woman, the scavenger, the street child, are so privilege to have access to: the employment of brute strength in subhuman conditions. It’s primitive, it’s crude, but it sure is damn entertainment when these characters belt out notes of dizzying heights, dance in a lewd imitation of waddling ducks, and deliver banal lines of a badly-written monologue.
To step out of the grit, to be beamed worldwide as noontime stars wanting to be taken seriously, is what they live for. Everyone heard their stories and by sufficing their needs by the dole-out afterwards, everyone is happy.
This is thus how my afternoon unfolds, shitting the bullies and taunting the bullied.
Today, the taking of my medicine has been put on hold. I have yet to buy replenishment enough for the next ten days, which would bring me forward to the payday. By that time, I shall buy my meds sufficient for the next fifteen days. And on it goes, the wait for the payday and my medicine replenishment, payday and my medicine.
Tuition fees, allowances, electricity bills I have yet to resolve. Already the shampoo has been diluted with water half the volume, the toothpaste now badly tortured, and the soap bar for laundry is down to the last quarter. The signs of the time. Mundane concerns that I assume and I now want to suspend worrying about. This has been the grind I test myself for adaptability. So far, I’ve been exceptional. But this came. For now, my meds loom larger and all other things are keeled over to the side.
My shift for work starts late afternoon and ends in the evening. Hence the bath. I do the unthinkable when I wash myself. I sing. Not love songs, not ballads. Rock music is a no-no. The list includes Shout for Joy, Never Say Goodbye, Take me Out of the Dark – my friends note my fondness of this song in karaoke bars. They say it’s the subconscious speaking my repressed desire of fair complexion, not a plea to stay in the light – and Natutulog ba ang Diyos. The philosophy of architecture of the house is such that the bathroom, the toilet has no room for the said activity, is in full view of passersby. Now when I perform the screaming vibrato, some innocents are drawn to see a half-naked in concert pose, the shampoo as microphone.
It’s this stupidity I am doing when I sudden think seriously about how my life has become thus far. Grappling with the reality fate and I created, I think about dying as an end of the self-sustaining grind of need that is inexhaustible and money that is not. I mean as a means of escape, more as a means of redemption. Whenever I want to get to the bottom of things, why living is like running full sprint in a rat wheel, where each strength expended returns you back to where you started, death must possess the escape to nurse a waning desire to run farther and the redemption to go back to the race armed with illusion that it is a different wheel.
****
I plan to buy my medicine before work. The pharmacy, from which I bought my first two-day worth of meds, has a branch a stone-throw away from the (mini)bus terminal. The lady I talk to refuses to reflect a two-peso markdown on one drug, saying such entitlement is exclusively for a receipt worth of one whole box. I try to coax her to give in, saying the other branch has set a precedent, but she’s stubborn.
I end up prowling Osmena circle close to midnight alone. The rotunda is dark and lifeless. The urgency of the task is set by my doctor’s directive explicit on the prescription: one tablet a day. Few minutes before midnight, I am striding out from the drugstore.
I consume two pieces of bland, coarse bread quickly. I unpack my purchase and take in my meds. When I check the time, it is exactly midnight. As I walk homeward bound, there arises a nagging questionability of this practice, like is an overdose likely if I take the succeeding tablets hour earlier than is set tonight, which I strongly intend to do the next day?
For now, I have fulfilled my doc’s advice and my life has been given another lease. I shall face the problem when I get to the next day.
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