And after Fear, Oblivion

(All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This is an untrue story.)

What would you rather be? A penguin or a flying fish? — Maggie asks Andy Millman in Extras

It was Black Saturday when Oblivion arrived.

Oblivion looked the part: hair unkempt, Fantomas T-shirt faded by too much Clorox (which made him smell of laundry and masturbation), carrying a tinfoil-covered, rhinestone-studded sickle. If Death lived in Vegas that would be his accessory. Death once gambled away his cowl and sickle in a game of Blackjack. Luck was not amused.

Oblivion took one look at me and cussed. “You again? What is it this time?”

A girl broke my heart, I said, looking at my fingers stained with Payne’s Gray oil paint. Twitching all the while as Oblivion neatly arranged a chair before sitting down, obviously pissed. He prepared to speak. Oh, the mounting horror.

“What the F, dude? Did you know a man was sentenced to a beheading because of sorcery charges? Sorcery! Don’t you think he needs me more than you? What about the Haitians? You driveling, sniveling walking bag of flesh, long hair, bad teeth, smeared eyeliner and insomnia! Didn’t Depression and Despair visit you already?”

Depression was one sad mother. She wore a magenta gown made of straw. She complained about how my studio smelled of turpentine and regret (“Try acrylic!”), about how there’s nothing to eat (“Instant noodles and whisky? Might as well buy a bag of kidney failure!”), and meeting a person who’s more depressed than her (“You, my friend, take the cake!”). Said she was going to buy a soda. Never came back. That was the last we saw the straws.

The other one was more pragmatic. Wore a bowler hat. Carried an iPhone. Despair looked around the studio. What was he looking for? “A gun,” he curtly replied, although he conceded that it was a bitch to get a piece these days, gun ban and all. He instructed me how to go about it: put the gun in your mouth and shoot diagonally upwards to the base of the brain, not to the temple or under the chin. “Some sturdy twine rope or industrial-strength muriatic acid, do you have? Those will do the trick. Don’t go try offing yourself by overdosing on Ecstasy pills — unless you’re just dicking around. It won’t kill you. Believe me. I warned one guy about it as he wrote something on his chest. I left. I know a sham a careless whisper away.”

He left me also. He said he will be back when I’ve figured out what to do with my beggarly possessions, a grocery list as I head for the afterlife. Where should the books go? Should I separate the Murakamis from the Mishimas. What about the CDs? The DVDs — the ones bought from HMV, Amazon and Makati Cinema Square? Who should take care of the paintings — even if no one wants to buy them anyway? How do I plan on disposing items I don’t want people to see when I’m dead — the Digital Playground porn collection, for example. Those Sasha Grey discs, Maria Ozawa in my hard drive.

***

Oblivion was not like the others. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. “You lose a chick and I have to come here and

hear your story out? You know where I’d rather be? On the beach where no one knows who I am. Where Pleasure walks around like Olivia Wilde in a red string bikini. People sunning up, getting drunk, falling in love, fooling around, living the Ricky Martin. I don’t want to be here with you in West Greenhell, San Juan. You should be outside, too. Enjoy life while you’re still alive.”

To plead my case, I darkly muttered a long monologue:

This girl was extraordinary; our relationship was extraterrestrial.

Weird it is how we met each other. I put my thoughts down to be published, a lovelorn letter to the callous world (or more specifically the readers of the newspaper that I work for) and she read them. Whether it was about the records and books that I wrote about, or the foulness and the filth of my language, I am not sure what exactly, but she responded.

It was not just a rollercoaster ride, it was a freaking trip to the moon. We went galaxy hopping: with her driving the ship down the Milky Highway, illuminated by dead planets and throbbing stars. We watched Oasis and Ian Brown in Bangkok, with her nearly fainting from dehydration; and afterwards walking the ends of the earth to get a taxi to take us back to the Four Seasons — in Hell — Hotel. At the Summer Sonic rock festival in Tokyo, I watched her jump in all her sweatiness as she brandished Paul Weller’s white pick of destiny. We rode the train whistling past the graveyard to The Cure show in Hong Kong. She swam in Boracay, while I floated ridiculously and flailed about dramatically. On the way home, we rode this small, rickety plane. Like a mini-bus that flies, I tell you. I thought I spotted Doom near the cockpit. I held on to her for dear life when it got really turbulent. She turned to me and said everything would be alright.

The magazine hunts. The coffee-shop talks. The booze, the smokes, and the profiteroles of it all.

She sang Total Eclipse of the Heart at Mag:net with our friend Audrei. I was waiting for her to do the Bob Fossil dance (see The Mighty Boosh season one). Or for the people in the bar to start beaming Children of the Corn eyes (see Bonnie Tyler video). 

I never knew someone like her existed. She stepped out of a dream. A Tom Robbins heroine dancing the world into rapture, a protagonist in a John Hughes movie wishing for something good to happen on her 16th birthday, a young fleshy girl painted by Balthus. She is the first beer and the last cigarette. She was all I ever had, and I threw it all away.

“Yes,” interjected Oblivion. “I was there last year when you sent her clothes, bags and shoes to her place, you S.O.B.! Do you know how she felt when you abandoned her? She went to your exhibit in a mourning cape, remember? You told her you needed ‘space,’ you barefaced liar. If you needed space you should’ve become an astronaut. It took some time and a lot of work before I was able to make her forget you. Then you came crawling back like the worm that you are.”

But, Mr. Oblivion, I realized that was the biggest mistake of my life. We got back together and everything seemed fine. We already made plans. Buy a house and set up two studios. Like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Name our kid either Damien or Morrissey, and travel: get lost again in Tokyo’s Yaesu train station, eat pizza at Piccadilly Circus, watch the Rolling Stones, the reunited Libertines, or — she would laugh at this — Deep Purple in Bombay. Spend more time with our friends — Ziggy Stardust and Sister Morphine, Howard Moon and Vince Noir, Shaun the Sheep and Darren Lamb. But now, everything has been put on hold. To be with her again, hell, I know that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for me to see her standing outside my doorway.

“Did she ask for ‘space’?” mocked Oblivion, laughing like Christopher Lee after rising from the dead. “How is it like to eat your own vomit?”

I told Oblivion that I am going to honor her request for space, for some time alone. I want her to be happy even if it means removing myself from the entire proceedings. I don’t mind. I shouldn’t mind. This should be about her for once. About her entire floating world that doesn’t concern a deadweight like me.

“You lying son-of-a…!” Oblivion snapped, picking up the resin skull on the coffee table and posed as if he were Hamlet spotting a wide receiver at the end zone. “When someone says, ‘I want you and your new partner to be happy,’ you really mean, ‘I am going to buy black candles in Quiapo and implore the devil to send you a plague of boils and locusts. I played golf with Beelzebub the other day and he was pissed as hell about men behaving more evilly than him. The midget President of your country scandalized even the devil, but I digress. Listen…”

Oblivion stood up, prepared for an epic diatribe as if limbering up before delivering the Sermon on the Mount.  

“Seen a mirror lately? Here you are: Moping, looking bleary-eyed, unshaven, beleaguered, listening to Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Nick Drake and Tom Waits. I can’t blame you. Upon hearing their songs, you kind of wish you were broken-hearted so as to absorb them better. You can’t be cheery and chirpy, listen to So Long, Marianne or Innocent When You Dream, and get it. You have a guitar, a Stratocaster. Why not write your own ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ or ‘Sea Change’? Dylan and Beck went through the same experience as you. Oh yeah, they moped a bit. Especially Beck when he found out about his longtime girlfriend cheating on him by checking her e-mail. Sounds familiar? ‘Put your hands on the wheel, let the golden age begin.’ He came up with that. And you could hear Bob bellowing with bile on Idiot Wind. ‘I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me.’ What about you? Be Neruda. Write something beautiful instead of all that crap you write about. Only art can save you know. But judging from the paintings in your studio, you won’t be a future Mark Rothko whom I visited in his kitchen before he slit himself with a razorblade. Maybe like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner… when he was nine. Maybe a bit better than Hitler when he was doing his kitschy Viennese landscapes years before trashing half of Europe. You know who among us visited Adolf the most? Delusion. And they were both vegetarians and loved Wagner and…”

I cut him off. But art is pointless. I’d rather be with her right now, give up this careening career, and lead a quiet life with a pretty house and pretty garden.

“But you saw her pictures with the new guy, smooching, swapping saliva along the highway under a ‘Safety First’ construction sign, looking so sweet and snuggly as they rode his red yuppie chariot. All the while you the clueless boyfriend were home, scratching your balls, wondering where the hell she was and why she wasn’t answering your calls. You never knew she had it in her to do such a thing, she looking like an angel and all. And this has been going on for months now. Since when… January? That must’ve hurt. Like sitting on the Judas Cradle. There is a term for it in your language: ‘Iniputan ka sa ulo.’ Another one: ‘Tapos na ang boksing.’ Didn’t you read The Golden Bough? The new god has replaced the old god. Didn’t you steal her from another guy, a Brit, in the first place?”

Yes, I did.

“Did she tell you all about his shortcomings, how superior you are, and how she always dreamed of having a partner like you? Some crap about destiny? Is that right?”

Right.

***

Oblivion paused as if to deliver the knockout punch line. “Well you’re on the other side of the cornrows now. Boy George has a name for it — ‘karma chameleon.’ You come and go. Years from now, maybe the new guy — the Wonderful Tonight-quoting kissing bandit — will meet the same fate as you. Either that or they’ll get married. Not your shit anymore. So it goes. You’re fired! Elvis has left the building. Time to move on. Time to roll the final curtain down. Time heals all wounds. Time, blah blah blah. You are the weaker link, goodbye!”

I told Oblivion that is precisely why I needed him more than the others. I complained about the days going very slowly, how life became suddenly purgatorial. I began the descent on Wednesday, waiting for text messages that never arrived, hoping for either assurance (Barry Manilow: “Somewhere down the road, our roads are gonna cross again…”) or closure (Lee Ving: “I don’t care about you, f*ck you!”), anything. It felt like two days. Thursday, April Fool’s Day, I saw the pictures when I opened Pandora’s e-mailbox. I automatically improved my chances of becoming the patron saint of the betrayed, the abandoned and the cuckold. I hadn’t been eating. Heated up bread when I got acidic cramps. Trying to vomit nothing is a piece of performance art. Even the toilet bowl found it pathetic. Sleep? I have forgotten how it feels. Jack D. and Johnnie W. were no help at all. Black Friday came and un-went. Thought of what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. Flashbacks and flash-forwards. And then it’s Blacker Saturday, and it had been a tsubibo of emotions. How I miss the smell of her hair, her hatred of cats, and how the studio — well the entire universe — seemed to light up when she’s around, smiling, reading Nylon or simply talking about her cousins. Little things that meant the world to me.

I get different visitors now. First was Denial then followed by Anger, Pain, Depression, Despair, Acceptance, Regret, Fear and now you, Mr. Oblivion, the scariest of them all. Oh yeah, Hope came by one morning while I was writing these words in my diary: I will entomb myself in the condo and wait for your blue Sentra to come sputtering into the car park, for the twist of those keys, for that door to open, and for you in all your morning glory to enter.

Hope was wearing a red Care Bears shirt, had curls like her, and carried a purple Tokidoki bag. She also chewed Double Mints. She shook her head as if surveying a filleted corpse on the train tracks, a mess of meat and black liquid that was once a man. “I don’t think I belong here.” Then left.

“Dude,” said Oblivion, looking aghast, really annoyed. “This too shall pass. When Vanity broke my heat three years ago, I didn’t sit on my ass to wait for Oblivion to save me. You know why? Because I am goddamn Oblivion! These things happen even to us. You just have to wait it out. Tomorrow is Easter. Start a new hobby, a new career. Learn how to embalm, for instance. Do ballroom dancing. You know why we both have to explain your loss away with pop cultural references? Because the unadorned truth is terrifying. But, hey, you know what? After our lovely little session this afternoon, you’ll get a visitor. Maybe Hope again, or maybe False Hope. If it’s the latter, take what she has to say — even if she lies a lot and has garlicky breath. You have to. A comedian once told me, ‘There is nothing like no choice to make you feel at home.’ Ciao.”

And with that, Oblivion walked out into the violet night, dragging his sickle, mumbling something in Latin, gesturing like Richard E. Grant as Whitnail channeling the brooding Dane in front of the wolves in a zoo. “Man… What is this quintessence of dust… Deficit omne quod nasciture. Going. Going. Gone.”

Shortly after there came a knock.

Was it Hope? Was it False Hope?

No.

It was her.  

* * *

Thanks to Tom Robbins, Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman and the Mighty Boosh for the inspiration. Special thanks to the girl whom I wish I never met — ever — for the reverse inspiration. For comments, suggestions, curses and commiserations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.