Jan 13, 2011
I wake up and it's 2003.
Russ is rapping at my door, and after I put on my robe and open the door he asks, "Are you hungry?"
Turtle's Nest is quiet this afternoon. It's been open to customers 24 hours every day for a few months now. The nights have been so much tolerable; I no longer know how it feels to come home to a dark, sleeping house. The most quiet the place gets is when it takes a nap in mid-mornings or early afternoons. But it always looks awake at night, with or without customers. This afternoon, no one's downing beer. The weather's gloomy but good for walking, and so we go to look for a place to eat. Every now and then in between story tidbits, we ping-pong the same questions and answers to each other –
"Where do you want to eat?"
"I don't know."
"Wanna try (insert-name-of-potential-place-here)?"
"Yeah, we can do that."
"Yeah, we can do that."
"Maybe not."
– and it reminds me how, so many times in the past, we had to endure pangs of hunger for an hour because indecision over food was -- perhaps still is -- one of our greatest flaws.
We keep walking and laugh about how we're walking back to 2003, it's almost surreal. In that dream, you know where you are, the place is busy, but no one's familiar anymore save for a few. You find a familiar person and then it's the why-are-you-here-but-I'm-glad-you're-here kaboom from somewhere inside you, they talk, they're speaking an unfamiliar tongue but you understand perfectly.
We're walking through the squalid barangay beside UP where a selection of carenderias are situated. We realize it's a weekday – students, perpetually penniless as students usually are, leave no seats vacant where the food's cheap. We walk under huge acacia trees, we're looking at the same crazy woman who used to walk around these parts half a decade ago, we're walking the same old streets with mangy dogs and mangier kids, we turn left and pretend we're students and find ourselves in the cafeteria of the school we went to. We're surprised to find Devil Incarnate there, still preaching about God at the same table where she imposed her religion on my gullible self and on so many more. She's still at it with a fresh batch of minions. Same hair, just glossier. Jason's there in the cafeteria with more pounds on him and he sits with us to have lunch. It's hard to believe he's teaching classes instead of running late to them. Sirmundz (Sir 'Mundz eventually metamorphosed into one word) drops by and I can't imagine how we never used to drink with this guy when we were younger because he was, after all, part of the faculty. The camote-fries vendor, Manang Lisa, is at her decade-old cart, peeling camote to cook into her version of French fries, exchanging friendly banter and tabloid stories with two other women. She doesn't look a day older. Everything looks deceptively the same, except that we feel different.
Places house memories. Funny thing about revisiting them is you're hearing and seeing the same stories but it's never quite like that movie you've watched fourteen times.
We leave, light a stick, walk back to 2011 where Turtle's Nest is still quiet. This time it's not really just the afternoon that's quiet. Maeng, The Tenant, just ended his 7-year run with Turtles. Russ is moving back to his house later. He promises not to get too settled in there again. He expects he'll watch more TV now. I move out in two days, my life already reduced into a sorry pile of boxes. Vera had just finished transporting their stuff back to Mactan last week, and is now preparing to move to Norway with her husband Thommas. The other nest across, Kukuk's, is being reclaimed by its owner and the business has to close. We have to make way for the relocation of the pension house business in the rooms we've bunked in these past months. Liyo is waiting for the three of us to arrive in Manila in February. I'm booking the flights later when I get to the office. I'm going to end the day with a beer, this time without the constant fixtures walking up and down the staircase. Tonight, my room will be the only one left occupied.