The Wily Filipino

My Friend R.

I was in fifth grade when I met my friend R. I'm not sure if we ever really hung out, or played the way fifth-grade kids do. He sat somewhere a few seats behind me. I do remember one of my classmates calling him (in English) an ape, which may have had to do with the way he somewhat lumbered around. I can't imagine R. liking that very much.

It was perhaps in my third year of high school that R. became my friend. He was rather gentlemanly, and a funny if obsessive storyteller, with a good critical eye, as far as kids went, concerning the TV episodes and cartoons he watched. We talked about movies, about The Return of the Jedi, about girls we had crushes on. He had an infectious, neighing laugh, which I heard pretty often over the phone. He was, in short, a seemingly well-adjusted teenager, except for one crucial thing.

Every high school class has its punching bag, the person or group of people who was shat upon mercilessly by everyone. Whether or not you are in the heart of the First World, or in a provincial high school in a small town 90 minutes south of Manila, this miserable person exists. That person was inarguably and indubitably R.

Well, let me rephrase that. It wasn't exactly "everyone," but rather, a group of bullies who made life miserable for a sorry few: the nerds, the geeks, the effeminates. (As one of the geeky ones, and the youngest guy in the entire class, I endured countless slaps upside the head, being rubbed with the equivalent of poison oak, and a couple of tosses into a swimming pool and a steel drum full of stagnant, mosquito-infested water, but that was nothing compared to what R. had to go through.)

Individually the bullies weren't so terrible; collectively, their brand of rambunctiousness (not counting all the people smacked down the chain of command) should have had them locked up: shoplifting bags full of highlighters (which were redistributed during class time, but I wasn't cool enough to deserve one); chucking a brick into the biology teacher's aquarium; breaking into the poor agriculture teacher's office and pissing all over his desk and chair. They were truly a piece of work, these guys; most of them have thankfully mellowed out and have become good fathers. (I should add that at least three of them have turned into surprisingly affable, responsible, and -- perhaps most important in the context of this story -- genuinely regretful people.)

But back to R. Unfortunately, it only requires a little knowledge of the twisted dynamics of early teenage cruelty to know that R. was more or less earmarked for destruction. He was, for starters, a little on the husky side. He sweated profusely; sometimes he stank. (Sample remark from one of the bullies: "Putang ina, maligo ka ngang baboy ka, ang baho mo! [Son of a bitch, take a bath, you pig, you stink!]") He was also a lot paler than most of the kids, which made the unsightly rashes and hives on his arms stand out more. Unlike the stereotype of other bullied children, R. did not make up for it with a sharp tongue or spectacular grades; I remember him barely passing his classes. (I suspect he may have had some sort of learning disability -- he would tell me about having trouble reading -- which couldn't have endeared him to the teachers at the time.) To make matters worse, his fits of rage were visually spectacular displays of impotence: once the bullies got him going, my friend R. would turn red, with tears and snot smeared on his face, and proceed to launch into a series of inarticulate grunts and howls.

Such a status at the bottom of the hill was not exactly inherent (or, obviously, objective), but the hierarchy of taunts was established fairly early on. His social mobility was fixed, with nowhere to go. Towards the end, once the name-calling had settled into a more stable and finely-honed act of inflicting pain, his weight didn't matter anymore.

Male circumcision in the Philippines, as it is in many other cultures, is considered a rite of passage. The main difference is that it's taken fairly seriously as the initial entry into a state of manhood, which means that the operation is performed -- if not by the local herbolario with a razor blade who spits chewed guava leaves onto the wound to form a poultice, then at least the local doctor's clinic -- just before the boys hit puberty. (In a neat act of gender inversion, the deskinned boys would wear a skirt for the next few days while their penises healed; skirts were, after all, looser and more comfortable than jeans.)

I'm sure you can tell what would happen next. The story went around that R. was still uncircumcised, and taunts of "supot!" were hurled openly at him -- shouted from across the street, yelled from passing jeepneys, scrawled on his notebooks, spread in a whisper campaign to all the girls. (The Tagalog "supot," with emphasis on the second syllable, means "uncircumcised;" "supot" with the stress on the first syllable means a paper or plastic bag.) It was the perfect insult: no homophobic male teenager would demand proof, much more want to see it, and no self-respecting kid would offer such evidence publicly.

To this day I wonder whether, in high school, I was his only friend. We talked on the phone, maybe for hours at a time, almost every week. And this is what shames me today: I never made this friendship public. I don't remember ever really standing up for him; sometimes I'd gleefully join in the chants of "supot" from the back of the class. The one time I saw him throw his backpack to the ground, put his fists up, and challenge his antagonist ended badly; he was floored instantly, and pathetically, with one punch. He was left sitting on the ground, with his nose bleeding. I think I may have walked away.

Perhaps my lowest point was joining a "rescue brigade" to which my services were harnessed. For our so-called "Acquaintance Parties," I and a group of other guys happily volunteered to cut in every time R. would ask a girl to slow-dance. I can't imagine what it would have been like: to be turned down repeatedly, by girl after girl, until the vastness of the second-year high school conspiracy against his sorry ass was finally fully revealed to him, in all its noxious glory.

Life at home wasn't any better. From what I was able to piece together from my long conversations with him, R. came from what was almost quaintly called, in those days, as a "broken home." R. had never seen his father; he had moved out in a fury after his wife cheated on him repeatedly. (His mother had left and was working in a Manila department store.) R. was essentially raised by his grandfather, who was similarly estranged from his wife (though she was living in a separate house in the same compound). He didn't think much of his younger sister, who he thought had taken his mother's side because she was living with her in Manila.

I don't remember his grandfather very clearly, though my folks had had him and R. over for lunch one Saturday at some point. What I seem to remember was that he seemed to have stepped out of some TV advertisement for brandy: the somewhat sleazy older man with coiffed hair, fitted shirt over middle-age spread. Perhaps a gold necklace around his neck. It did not help that his grandfather spent most days sitting in their car parked outside the high school, ready to whisk R. home right after class, ostensibly to protect my friend from the bullies. "Super Lolo to the rescue!" found its way very easily to the list of insults for R. (In fact, if I remember correctly, R.'s grandfather initially didn't want him chatting on the phone with me, or anyone, for that matter.)

One thing was for sure: he loved his dad, the father that existed only in a faded picture which I only now remember he showed me once. One day he was sporting a new binder or notebook, I forget which -- given his bad luck, it probably ended up getting stomped or stuffed down a toilet -- and he proudly showed me the Christmas wrapping paper, which he had kept it in the binder for safekeeping. Written on it were words like "I'm proud of you, son! Merry Christmas! Love, Dad;" the gift wrap was heavily creased, as if it had been re-read and re-folded constantly. One other thing was definite: he loved his grandfather, who seemed equally devoted to him.

His dad's gift made him happy. Most of the time he was not. That laugh of his became rarer and rarer. The beginning of each school day was also the beginning of a constant cycle of taunts and elaborate pranks. Hell was Monday to Friday, a daily journey through a series of predictable torments.

Day after day: The whispers or yells of "supot" behind his back. The contents of his bag, pilfered. His clothes at gym time, thrown into the trash. The food, the garbage, the spit that would end up in his hair or on the back of his shirt. His new backpack, thrown into the urinal. His books, secretly scrawled with insults. He was the guy who ended up somehow getting tied to his chair, the guy whose bag got stuffed with a dead reptile, the guy who got thrown into the swimming pool with all his clothes on, the guy who at first was simian, then porcine, then finally reduced to his foreskin. Even the quiet, mild-mannered boys made fun of him. Even some of the girls.

And night after night: he would call me, and confide in elaborate, loving detail how, John Rambo-style, he would execute his tormentors. The kinds of guns he would buy. The way he would enter the lobby of the high school and proceed up the stairs, past the principal's office, and turn to the right, and hit the third-year wing. The order of their deaths. And then his fantasy would blow over, and he'd start talking about our high school professors again. But sometimes his anger would be directed toward his mother, who he would calmly (and constantly) call a puta. She was the one, he said, who ruined her marriage; she was the one, he said, who broke up their family.

(I honestly don't know how I reacted when he would tell me these things. Was I afraid? Did I egg him on? Did I join him in his fantasies? Did I find it boring? As I type this, I realize I can't remember. I've already repressed it.)

I do remember this, though: one day, after a long shouting match with the guy who was Number One on his hit list, my friend R. angrily told him he would actually pay him not to tease him again. Amidst his tears, he then pulled out his wallet and gave Number One a twenty-peso bill. Incredulous, Number One stared at the money, pocketed it, then, with a smile on his face, called R. a faggot, his palm outstretched. (Later we heard that R. ended up giving Number One his entire weekly allowance for at least two weeks.)

One day early in the first semester of 1986, in our fourth year -- ah, I can't remember the details anymore. A bunch of us were standing outside by the flagpole in front of school, and my friend R. had been worked into another one of his rages. Someone from behind me had picked up a rock and lobbed it at R.'s head. It hit him. There he was, blood streaming from his temple and mixing with the tears in his eyes, snot running from his nose. He turned and went across the street, sobbing as he ran, where he flagged down a jeepney. I never saw him again.

I talked to him a few times afterwards, maybe a week later: his grandfather was finally pulling him out, he was thinking of cooling off for a little bit, maybe getting his high school degree somewhere else, apply to college one day. He was still angry, but talk of returning to our school to kill Numbers One to Eight had disappeared. Then I went to college. I never heard from him again. Neither, it seems, did any of my classmates. He had gotten married, he had kids, he finished college, he was running their family's business, he was as big as a house -- all secondhand rumors, all unsubstantiated. No one had seen him. No one even knew if he was still alive. And I completely understand why he wouldn't want to get in touch with any of us; we were young and stupid, which is still no excuse.

About two years later, after hearing the details from a friend, my mother sat me down and told me R.'s story.

It was apparently common knowledge in our small town, at least among people of a certain generation, and now among my classmates as well, that my friend R. and his sister were the product of an incestuous union between his "grandfather" and his own daughter, R.'s mom. Repeatedly abused, she gave birth to both R. and his sister in turn; disgraced by her pregnancies, she was fired from her job as an elementary school teacher and fled to Manila.

This was the reason why she took R.'s sister with her, for fear that she would be next; this was the reason why the "grandfather" was so protective of R., so that no one could tell him the secret; this was the reason why his grandmother was estranged from her husband. In short, the mother he detested and repeatedly called a whore was perhaps the saddest victim of all; the "grandfather" he adored was a vicious, lying monster; and the "father" he loved -- the man who never forgot him on his birthday or on Christmas, the man whose blurred photograph he treasured -- was the product of an elaborate, horrible lie.

I was stunned. I was angry. I wanted to strangle that vile insect of a "grandfather" myself. And I was afraid -- and was secretly thrilled -- of what would happen if -- or when -- R. found out.

And I wept: I wept for my friend R., for his fucked-up life, for his poor mother. I ask no forgiveness for the casual, oblivious cruelty of my friends and classmates who simply stood by. The people on his hit list have to make their penance some other way. And some friend I've turned out to be: a friend in secret, who, like a coward, could not acknowledge this friendship, and now, by telling this story, I've betrayed him further.

It's almost been twenty years to the day since I last saw him. Sometimes I wish his grandfather was long dead; sometimes I wish they had somehow worked things out; sometimes I hope he and his mother have made peace, and that he understands why she did the things she did; sometimes I hope he has a family of his own -- or something, anything -- to mean that he could start over. Most of the time I hope he's still laughing that laugh of his.

Posted by the wily filipino at January 13, 2006 09:12 PM