Of course, not before asking that classic line, "Miss, can I know your name?" which scared her off and nevertheless evolved into a poem called "The Girl who Rode on Fassbinder’s Jeepney," the pedestrian transforming from a form of pedophilia into something more sublime.
These days we seldom encounter girls with bracelets around their ankles much less the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder on jeepneys, though those vehicles remain stuck in the middle of the road with their drivers exchanging bills for small change while a line of other vehicles wait impatiently behind, beep beep.
The preferred mode of transportation lately has graduated into the elevated train stations, particularly one going the opposite direction on Taft, northwards to Monumento, where we find ourselves habitually jostling with other office workers for a zone of comfort, a bit of elbow room on the way to work. The last three stops for us are UN, Central, Carriedo, and they are likely to remain so until the Pasig River ferry becomes operational again and we can write about the three stops on that route towards Manila Bay: Quiapo, Escolta, Plaza Mexico. Well, at least for so long as we are gainfully employed in that part of town.
UN. Street where the children were born. In pre-war times, it must have carried an American state’s name, as many of the streets’ names were in that area. Street where once we reported a theft in the neighborhood, a break-in during the holidays at the old apartment in Singalong, and the responding police officer typing our answers to his questions on a rickety typewriter. Street where we saw a STAR reporter about to cross, isn’t that Cecille Suerte along with colleagues on the Western beat? Street where Marketplace is located, housing the offices of Superferry, formerly WG&A, where twice we were given complimentary tickets to the south. Judd Salas, corporate communications officer, must still be there in an upper floor office, looking out to the view of the bay. Street where at the end of it corner Roxas Boulevard is a statue of the late Carlos P. Romulo, formerly our man at the UN. Street where on the other end is the district of Pandacan smelling of oil depots.
Central. Stop formerly known as Plaza Lawton but has since been renamed Liwasang Bonifacio, site of many an anti-government and Labor Day rally with the huge backdrop murals, from the Marcos years onwards. Stop where the sub-editor Roberto Basilio, hubby of the poet Chingbee, got down on his way to work at the Manila Times. Lately a favorite rendezvous spot of those with too much time on their hands wanting to hang out at the SM Manila. A stone’s throw from the Main Post Office where we have picked up books, tapes, whatnot via registered mail on the basement customs window, and a stray cat ambling nearby, yawning. Books thick as bricks leaving us swimming in the tide of their texts such as "I Take Thee English..." yet how we jealously guard our reading lest someone creep up from behind and tear the book apart ripriprip; music from a long lost friend going through breakdowns in the different states of America: Massachusetts, California, Oregon till his father died across the ocean and the music stopped.
Carriedo. Where we get down to catch a jeep for Port Area, Fassbinder or no Fassbinder. Home of the famous pirates and ambulant violators of intellectual property rights, where we get to view the following titles: Eros, Swimming Pool, 2 x 4, a Chaplin classic title as well a Tarkovsky, King Kong, Constant Gardener, the complete Beatles Anthology boxed set, only not in a box, REM, a reconstituted Cream, Circus with the Stones and Joe Cocker, Chet Baker with Elvis Costello and Van Morrison, 9 Songs, The Pornographer, Manderlay, the Monica Bellucci Collection. Place of some sidestreet where various cheap bargain aphrodisiacs and sex aids can be bought: vibrators, cattle capsules, the Chinese viagra known as vigorous.
Where a fresh banana can be bought for five, even four pesos. Or if we choose to evade the pirates we can go the way of Plaza Lacson on the tiled square with the former Manila mayor looking like MacArthur whose park never melted in the dark, the ice cream hopias melting into the eye sockets of the eyeless mendicant with the orange whistle and percussive can filled with coins by the Sta. Cruz church. Where a wayward calesa can take us any which way into the past, why isn’t that history lurking at every corner, a breath away from Tan Lung’s House of Ill-repute?
Stop where we remember the late great engineer poet painter Doms Ilio, perhaps the last of his generation, who had once given a copy of his book Guerrilla Memoirs at his home on Aguinaldo Street, UP campus, way back when, and which he especially inscribed to us saying that it might remind us of James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, no not the DVD version, the old guerrilla passing away in his hometown in Aklan at age 92, with an image of him holding a filter-less Philip brown as if he is about to give it to us, or to a nameless woman of a sudden sitting across from him but with no bracelet around her ankle, "miss, can I know your name?"