Overnight

By Michael Balili

PJ and I decided to create a zine that we’d piggyback with the release of the end of the semester folio, a collection of the works we workshopped over the semester. We chose to work on literary recipes and then convert the ingredients to anaphoras and lists, like a pillow book for drunk home cooks, inspired by a vintage poster of a housewife in the 50’s cooking an elaborate feast for a family of four we saw at an antiques shop: “I cook with wine… and sometimes I put it in the food.” 

We’ve talked about pulling an all-nighter at her father’s house, and it’s either we finish the zine, or we end up drunk and we accomplish nothing. There are many times in the past when we accomplished nothing, drunk or high on whatever PJ had at that moment. I am adamant about finishing the zine, but I am also weak-willed, easily swayed without being threatened or extorted. We’ll work in a room where her desktop computer is, with comfy beanbags on the floor which I guess is where I’ll sleep later, or where I’ll pass out. 

I met PJ in one of the poetry readings hosted by my writing group in college. And like most poetry readings, nobody listens to the poets reading their works—worse, there is a faint disdain for “performers”. Especially when the poem is pedestrian on paper, wannabe poets would rip it to shreds at impromptu workshops disguised as backhand jokes; on the other shore, there is also disappointment in poets who can’t give justice to their poems when they read them out loud—by the time these poets read their works, their soft, insecure voice murmuring into the microphone, everyone has gone off to a lively table conversation or chased their beer with a shot of soju: you just can’t win with these events. Then, come the fictionists who will read a passage from their work that feels longer than a by-the-numbers PowerPoint SONA.

These are my people although I still have impostor’s syndrome even though I’ve already published a short poem (a haiku), a short essay, and a flash fiction piece in my years in the org. It’s not much, but enough to build a sort of budding-writer confidence with a dash of youthful, invented tragedy. I am quite proud of my work that will come out at the end of the semester in a folio that we launched via a poetry reading in some bar. I’ve made good friends with my group through our workshops and competitions with other writers’ orgs. PJ is a friend of a friend and we hit it off the moment she passed the permanent marker to me to draw whiskers on the left side of her drunk friend’s face. She finishes coloring in the circle in her friend’s nose, the area that’s asking for a boop. 

I find out that she’s a psych major who writes stories on the side. She loves to hate-read Murakami and complain about him the entire day. What’s with all that jazz? (Apparently, there’s a lot). Why are there so many talking cats? (There’s only one). Not another incel protagonist! (She’s right, though). But she keeps on reading everything Murakami ever wrote, and I always end up teasing her that she secretly loves him. It’s one of those obsessions that eventually loop and turn unironic.

After she finishes coloring the face of poor Vincent (an ex-boyfriend) we drink more at the bar while the third fictionist starts reading. She talks non-stop and I love to listen: her family owns an island in Iloilo, her parents separated last year so she got a new car to bribe her off, she plans to shift to Comparative Literature next year, and her mother was an activist in the FQS, even went rogue and lived with the communists in the mountains of Doña Remedios Trinidad. They sent her back because she’s so mestiza that it’s so hard to hide here in the bushes when the army attacks. Her father was a member of a popular band in the ‘70s, dubbed as the Bee Gees of the Philippines, and plays the drums. Her parents were arranged to be married, which first they hated, then they found out that they were sexually compatible, then later when she was born, they found out that they couldn’t take each other’s guts. They applied for annulment more than a decade ago, but they usually fuck when they see each other. They withdrew their annulment case application (it was going nowhere anyway and was bleeding trust fund money) and remained fuckbuddies, a simplified version of an open relationship. PJ loves it because the shouting stopped.

I can’t help but feel jealous at PJ standing on top of her trust fund without a care in the world. My tragedy is that I am poor, born from nobody parents, grew up in a small town, and had almost escaped its mediocre aspirations by being able to study in the capital. There is a certain shine to PJ that attracts me: both of us have nothing to lose. I say that because I am tipsy but really everything about being financially insecure is a hoot: being poor is so boring. My mobility is dictated by my limited allowance disguised as being “shy” or “conservative” but really packaged as living vicariously through my friends’ weekend adventures.

Want to get out of here? She asks me.

Now? I ask, feeling a bit hesitant but this night is one of those nights where anything goes. 

Yes, let’s go back to the campus, I’ll show you something.

We walk out of the bar and dash back to the campus, a cloudless, clear, summer night with a lot of stars, I assume, but it’s hard to see all of them because of the incandescent sore of the city. I didn’t ask where to go, I let her lead the way through the roads and alleyways which are very familiar to me, the kind of familiarity that is imprinted onto your life, usually with a song, a face, a smell. She leads me to the back of the old canteen that winds down to the back of the university pool. 

Boost me up, she tells me, as if I know her entire plan. 

I shake my head. 

Yes! No one’s there anyway. Boost me up! Here, lie on all fours here, then slowly stand up until I can grab the chicken wires.

There’s something hypnotic about her, like a cult leader. I must have broken a rib when she used me as a booster because the day after, I got a fever. When she climbs over to the other side, I so want to leave, and I could have, but I didn’t. There’s something crazy about her that is so tempting, one of those little adventures that surprise or deceive you. I grab the lower bar of the chicken wire fence and lift myself, climbing over.  The moment my feet land on the other side, she starts undressing. 

What are you waiting for? She removes her bra, then her panties. I know you’ve been looking at my tits the entire night. Come on, don’t be so prude. It’s just the two of us! Don’t tell me you already have a stiffy! she tempts as she wades in the water.

I still don’t find the idea of skinny dipping attractive. More the less, nightswimming. First, I’ve taken up swimming as my PE 1, so I know how dirty the water is. And second, I’ve amassed a lot of shame in my body, I don’t even take my shirt off, always being teased about a huge birthmark on my back, the shape of an upside-down island of Sulawesi. But that night, I let it go and take my shirt off, the ache on my rib pulses a bit, pull my pants down together with my underwear and throw them at the floaters arranged like stacks of pancakes.

Cannonball, I shout! 

In the middle of the pool, we kissed.

>< >< ><

My third year in college are days of workshop classes and working at the 101 office as a student assistant. I need the money to supplement my small allowance. Even though the university dorm fees almost cost nothing, there are the miscellaneous things—readings, “proper food,” something for leisure later. Being the youngest and the most disposable in the office, I get to do all the shitty jobs: stapling forms, then unstapling them with the wire remover, photocopying agreements, sorting them, then fastening them into neat folders. It’s a rote job and the pay is minimal but I get to be enrolled first in courses of my choice on registration day.

Sometimes, I get to design pamphlets or posters which is the more fulfilling desk work. I used my Photoshop knowhow and internet savvy to claw my way up the office’s hierarchy. In a fortnight, I become the most important person in the room, old bureaucrats waiting for my shift just to unrar a PDF file, install an update, remove a virus. People start leaving bananacue on my desk every merienda time, with a post-it request, or a thank-you note.

My writing org has been my constant source of delight during these times. I usually live vicariously through them. I have a little time to hang out until late in the night at Sarah’s or take a “walk” with them at the lagoon while smoking weed, returning high and bloodshoteyed, or even just place a picnic mat at the grove and conspicuously drink cough syrup until high—listening to them talk about their days made me feel like I lived through them—not just because of my tight schedule but also I find weed boring (and other drugs bothersome), it just makes me feel sleepy, and cough syrup … I just hate any cherry-flavored anything. One of my favorite orgmates is Jean (as in Valjean) who usually ringleads these events, and serves as a shaman guide of sorts (he supposes). I love that he would always ask me to try these things. I’d always say no, but it’s nice to be asked.

PJ as a new member has been very active in our group activities and her energy is infectious: always trying to come up with new ways to irritate the other orgs in the tambayan complex. No one tells her to stop because it’s funny. We quickly become each other’s ride or die. And we also fuck when bored.

One time, we stay late and she urge us to use the other tambayans as bathrooms. We all pee at the Language Majors’ org tambayan because they all feel so superior, which annoyed us. The next morning we were laughing the entire day when we see them holding GA meetings at the table where PJ herself had peed, eating their merienda, highlighting their readings, then playing with the pen that has been rolling on the table for quite some time, then putting the caps in their mouths.

Because of this, PJ has an upward climb in our org’s social ladder. She was known as the crazy girl, a bit unhinged but a whole lot of fun, and nobody seems to fuck with her, and everyone is glad to have her on their side. If those days had been a season of Survivor, she’d be my meat shield, I’d always vote with her, and would never betray her even at final tribal council: it would be my strength and my weakness as the juries nitpick my non-game. I let her do her antics and I watch, and I enable, as long as it makes me laugh; it makes me happy when I see her enjoying whatever she’s up to.

The most elaborate prank she orchestrated was a prank on our fellow org mate, Mary Jo, which took weeks to play out. Mary Jo is not easy to like. She is athletic, a member of the Pep Squad, and very pretty. The things I know about Mary Jo are sparse: all I know is that she doesn’t want to be one-upped on anything, an overachiever’s overachiever. 

She’d always wanted to have the highest score in our Rizal class when she was my classmate, so I saw her relentlessness firsthand—which makes our org her weakness: she sucks at writing poems. Our workshops have been vicious, which make her work twice as hard, writing become a vehicle for her to please every one of us. Jean tells me that Mary Jo needs drugs, lots of them, to make her write better. There’s no other way man, he tells me, she must change her weltanschauung. I’ve always known that Jean has a thing for Mary Jo, but I didn’t want to push it. She’s a complete weltschmerz package, I say under my breath.

 I heard that! Be nice to her, okay? Tell PJ to tone it down, you know how she gets when she gets intense. Somehow, I feel like Jean is dead serious, so I just grunted. She needs someone to keep her grounded, and that’s your job, dude! I sometimes think those weed walks at the lagoon have made Jean wiser, like a tall yoda with a stinky afro.

PJ for a while has been inventing an indie band, an obscure one, that sounds like if Sigur Ros and Cocteau Twins had a lovechild. The vocalist of this invented band is trans, so the name of the band she invented is Transfigure, joining cult figure and transwoman together. Her voice is so ethereal and aside from using a violin bow against the electric guitar, they also sample Tibetan throat singing. PJ employs all of us to like this imaginary band, excluding Mary Jo in our conversations. We even swap blank CDs as their first albums around just to make it more believable as if we burned each other mixtapes. 

We all talk about how Transfigure will be playing at the Big Dome next month and that we should secure tickets, so we decide not to have any night outs for the next weeks or so. One day, Mary Jo, tired of being ostracized for our Transfigure huddle surprises us when she announces that she already bought tickets to the concert, and she talks about the band as if it were her favorite. To PJ’s amusement, she continues interviewing Mary Jo, asking her about her favorite song (the best title Mary Jo could come up with is “Roboto Italics”), her favorite band member (Mary Jo likes Tenzen, the drummer); the entire conversation of imaginary versus imaginary become awkward fast since no one can fact check anything. At one point they’re just staring at each other for a while until PJ’s contact lenses shift to the side and she end up screaming, My eye! My eye! PJ is blind as a bat without her glasses. She refuses to wear glasses because she says it makes her look like a pretty Jessica Zafra. I searched far and wide that day for a cotton bud to pull out her contact from her eye.

Ha! I knew you’re a fake fan, Mary Jo disses victoriously as I help PJ drop artificial tears into her dry eyes. That bitch, she hisses as I tell her not to move as I accidentally poke her left eye with the tip of the solution. Ouch, you dick! 

Hey I’m on your side! I shout at her. Now stay still. She eventually relents as Mary Jo slurps her empty Bobba Tea with more intensity, the sound drowning PJ’s comebacks. She stops when she accidentally slurped a group of pearls, choking her, sending her into a ten-minute coughing fit. Jean, of course, rushes to pet Mary Jo’s back.

That same night, we went to a concert at the Bahay ng Alumni, not necessarily to watch the kupaw bands screaming their angst out; at these kinds of concerts, there are fewer UP students and more outsiders, usually rockers who want to push and shove each other in the mosh pit. Mary Jo tags along, glowing with her self-imposed win. We’re there because we’re bored. We order the bottomless iced tea from the Chocolate Kiss and then use the confusion of the crowd and the loud music to escape paying. It’s just sixty pesos per bottomless glass but the idea of running away from it sounds very daring. It’s PJs idea: we’d sneak in a splash of Ginebra gin, transported into mineral water bottles, then mix it with the iced tea. When we run out of gin, we start running on PJ’s signal, running fast from the second floor, getting lost in the crowd as we scamper from all different directions: to the Film Center, to the Carillon tower only to meet later in our dark tambayan… I find myself out of breath at the Molave dorm where I spot Jean in the dorm’s lobby. A lot of people are gathered at the lobby which I find unusual. I greet Jean who’s dressed in his pambahay, holding a tumbler and a toothbrush. It’s news from New York, planes crashing down at the World Trade Center, and everyone’s panicking. It’s the start of World War III dude, Jean tells me with tears in his eyes. Mary Jo, appears out of nowhere and hugs Jean.

They become a couple the night the twin towers fell.

>< >< ><

 After 9/11, PJ started a nasty habit of stealing things. Not for any particular reason, but just for kicks. She starts stealing books from the library. The way she’d bypass the sensors is that she’d throw the books at the window from the second floor of the main library building and then recover them later. It works which makes me angry when we had work assigned on Elizabeth Bishop and most books were missing. She’d give them to me as “gifts” which I find sweet; I return these books at the overnight return box like I’m cleaning her mess.

She starts to steal from other people for fun, too. Small things, like ballpens, notebooks, readings, reading glasses—then throw them all at the garbage can and revel at the people looking hopeless for their lost things. The art of losing isn’t hard to master, bitches! She’d yell triumphantly at the grove where we would laugh nervously at a friend who’s beginning to lose it.

It gets worse when we become the victims of her kleptomania. It starts with Jean’s weed stored in a small Tupperware, the one used for sauces. Then it’s an umbrella, a Joni Mitchell CD, somebody’s lunch, Mary Jo’s cellphone (to everyone’s glee, inside someone’s Coleman)—then she did it to me. She steals money from my wallet and then uses that money to order a big bilao of pancit palabok for everyone. I even join the big merienda. I figure I’d appear petty if I confront her about it. Jean thinks so, too. We’d make plans on an intervention GA about her recent attitude problem, but nothing would materialize. Sensing maybe that I got a bit cold on her, I find the money returned to my wallet. I get to pay Jean that week and we eventually confront her. 

 PJ is very good at manipulating people. The moment she senses that we are ganging up on her, she starts crying… in just one eye, the left one. A steady stream of tears as if on cue. Instead of getting crossed, I find her performances funny. Nothing was lost, I’ve recovered my money, thinking maybe this was all just a phase like Madonna’s sex era or enlightenment pretense. We ask why she’s acting out and she wails a cry both cringey and sycophantic.

We found out that she was actually not enrolled that semester because of her grades and all the incompletes she forgot to…complete. She forgot to go to classes and had been hanging out at the tambayan last semester. She stole a Form 5 from the Registrar’s office while the attendant was not looking then pretended to enroll herself, advise herself on which classes to take, then forged the signatures at every step of the enrollment. 

The next semester, she becomes a non-major. Where will you go? I ask her.

Anywhere where they’ll have me, she’d answer. 

>< >< ><

On the night that we’re supposed to make the zine, I get to finally meet her father. He asked us to have dinner but PJ had ordered pizza so we went to the room where her desktop was. In my mind, I see him in some old noontime show with his band, maybe with Tito, Vic, and Joey, and young Aiza Seguerra bantering over a knock-knock joke. 

Out of nowhere, her grandmother bursts into the room pointing at me, screaming Saile! Saile! Saile!, her saliva foaming at the side of her mouth. She’s a scrawny lady, with an old perm, milky eyes, and so emaciated you can see the veins in her arms and shoulders. Her father quickly steps into the room, guiding her mother out, and apologizing to us. I don’t notice that PJ’s laughing hysterically in the corner of the room. She called you Saile! It’s Elias backward. It’s the name of her secret lover you know, the one she was supposed to elope with, but my grandfather had him killed. 

I’m not prepared to hear such violent family history. And now I’m a part of it? Maybe you look like Elias and that’s why she went gaga over you, she adds then rolling on the bean bags, laughing some more. Oh my god, there I even peed a little, running out of breath, she continues to laugh. 

You dick! I screech at her as I kick her jokingly in her stomach but she’s still laughing, and now, crying. We wrestle and ended up fucking. We didn’t finish the zine that night, but instead, we drink beer until we’re both sleepy. She warns to lock the door or else her grandmother might claim me again as her Elias, like a demented succubus. I find this creepy and very bothersome, so I lock the door and put the computer chair against it before sleeping on the bean bags. What would I do if she were to open the door with an ax like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, her wrinkled face peeking at the ax hole screaming SAILE! I know how powerful starcrossed lovers’ longings are, I’ve read in Rilke’s Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. how a universe is born from all that grief—what I’m saying in an unpretentious way is that should I just play the part? There’s nothing wrong with playing up something for someone with Alzheimer’s if it makes them happy for a while, and I’ve done more humiliating things than this, I coach myself. I’ve even heard of placebo pills in Japan they give to dementia patients, so they don’t feel neglected when they ask for medication they’ve already forgotten you’ve given an hour ago. The dread claws at me like a sleep paralysis demon until I fall asleep.

I wake up late the next morning and search for PJ, I hear a commotion coming from the garden. I first look in their dark kitchen. I find the thermos and the instant coffee and make some for myself. The shouting continues so I walk around their empty house, only the sunlight from the garden illuminates the creepy paintings of vintas and farmers on the walls like an NGO office that failed to pay their electric bill.

There, I see PJ holding two pistols of garden hoses and aiming them at her grandmother. It takes me a while to realize that her grandmother is naked. I spit out my coffee and let the mug go as it tumbles in their manicured lawn. PJ starts spraying water at her grandmother’s pale skin, wrinkles all over, her breasts sagging, her aureoles a pale tan, almost rose gold in color. I could see her drooping buttocks and the white public hair from her vagina that she tries to cover with her hands, while water runs down her face calling Saile! Elias! Saile! Elias!

PJ hands me the other hose pistol as she tells her grandmother to raise her arms so she can spray her armpits. Lorena, lift your arms up so I can clean them! She barks at her grandmother who refuses to remove the cover from her vagina because I’m there.

I don’t know what came over me but I start aiming the water at PJ. I’m gunning for her face until I see her losing her contact lenses as the torrent of water hits her more, shouting My eyes! My eyes! Stop! Stop! What’s your problem?! Stop! 

I know she’s mostly blind without her contact lens, but I don’t hear her shout, and I don’t stop. Then she points the hose pistol at me, hitting me until I’m soaking wet, too. 

I could see from the periphery her grandmother jumping like a little girl, clipping her arms on the sides of her torso, extending them and clapping like a seal. Vamos a jugar! Vamos a jugar! Elias! Por favor ten cuidado, Elias!  Te esperaré, she shouts gleefully

PJ goes inside the dark house to fetch some towels and walks back to her grandmother still jumping. She holds her shoulder to keep her still. She dries her grandmother’s face with the towel; she looks at me and throws the other one. I throw it back at her.

She gives me the stinky stare, How dare you?! she shrieks.

I hurry back inside to get my bag, still soaking wet, I run to the gate, past their perfectly manicured garden, past the creepy gnomes and Ave Maria grotto eaten by mold, past her still naked grandmother, past PJ, who uses the second towel to make a turban for her wet hair.

How dare me? I throw the question at myself. I text Jean an emergency code, a code for a favor that we can’t say no to, a code I can only use once a year: 9/11. For a while, I think about the future while I find my way out of the subdivision. A patrol guard riding a golf cart swings by and I ask a lift to the front gates. I imagine that it is 2040; EDSA becomes stories of superhighway of flying cars and Visayan islands have disappeared to rising sea levels. I receive a hologram call from PJ explaining what happened today and saying that if stop being a little bitch we could fuck. And I command my house from the jacuzzi, sipping rosé—Computer: block her. The thought puts a smile on my face. When we reach the gate, the security guard asks me if I want them to call me a cab, looking at me with suspicion, realizing I’m still soaking wet. Are you a gardener? One guard asked.

A car pulls over and I see Jean’s face when the window rolls down. I also see Mary Jo, her face concentrated on parallel parking the car. Milady, we’re here to save you, Jean jokingly greets me. I hurriedly get on the yellow Corolla and shut the door as hard as I can. Hey, watch it! Mary Jo shouts at me. I see her wearing a self-printed shirt of Transfigure which makes me laugh. I tell her to take it off before she jinxes it, and the band breaks up.

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Michael Balili is the author of Kaiju (Ateneo de Manila de University Press, 2023). He co-founded Gacha Press (www.gacha.press) & horde: a journal of poetry & ideas (hordepoetry.substack.com). He teaches at the University of the Philippines - Diliman.

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