Thursday, April 12, 2007

Dream Journals Ten

I think my dad just spoke against my preferred sexual preference. Here is an account of his recent "dalaw" to me, in my dream.

Dream Sequence:

We were in an old familiar room. The books overflow from the bookcases, brown and dustied because of age. A huge table littered with trinkets beckoned in front of me. Seated behind it was my dad, scribbling something on his small dark notebook.

His face was very serious, almost to the point of appearing upset over something. In my stupidity, I asked him how our printing business was (which in real life, is still in operation. My dad's former driver/reporter/orbiter* shamelessly stole the name and rights from us.) He didn't say any word, but his face appeared more bitter when I asked him about it. After all, that same printing business costed him his life before.

Then he handed me some Chinese food leftovers in a styrofoam he took from one of the drawers of his table. Kainin daw namin yun. When he said it, two unfamiliar-looking guys appeared beside me. One was a chinito (for PEx readers, he looked like Lostwansoul!). I cannot remember what the second guy looked like. I told my dad that we're just gonna buy our own food, so he handed me a crispy five hundred peso bill he took from his wallet.

Next thing I knew, we were in a wet market. On my left side, I saw thick slices of meat. Wala lang, it was exposed from the elements at nilalangaw. Pero it seems that it was already half-cooked. On my right side was a huge grill oven. It was black, it had a huge opening in the middle, where the cook put the panggatong inside and it was full of ash. Tons of it.

My companion ordered three slabs of meat. When the vendor chose for us, the flies were all over the place. Parang nagsiliparan lahat sila dahil nabugaw. Then, nung ipapaluto na namin yung mga meat slabs eh biglang nagsipagbalikan sa meat yung pagkarami-raming mga langaw. It almost turned the meat shiny black. Suddenly I lost my appetite, but the cook was insisted that it was normal. Then he lighted a firewood that looked like a palm frond used during Palm Sundays. Instead of grilling the meat, he burned the slabs with the palm frond so that the flies on it would just drop dead, cooked by the heat.

Then in a background voice, my dad spoke to me.

He named names. It appeared to be his new employees and they were all guys. "Alam mo naman kung paano ang sistema sa massage parlor diba?" He asked. I was speechless, how on earth did he know?

Then the setting shifted again. This time, my eyes were focused on a closed beauty parlor. I could clearly see the mirror, two steel green chairs and some drawers. It might be a reflexology clinic but I'm not really sure.

End of dream.



---

*orbiter - in journalism parlance, a reporter who goes around beats (police beat, malacanang beat, congress beat) to ask people in power to contribute a token of money for the reporter's goodwill.

No comments: