how's this for my 24 hours

Yesterday was a long day. And it began at 4 pm.

Kakatawa, no. Nagising kasi ako ng 1 pm. Umatake na naman ang insomnia ko at dilat ako hanggang alas-singko ng umaga. And to think na pinapagdasal ko nang gabing yon na naghihilik na ko by 1 am.

Kaya eto. Isang buong araw sa buhay ni kaladkaring saffron blue. Life's a lot less drab when you go on those spur-of-the-moment sprees every once in a while.

4pm. Libis.
I had hastily put myself together—heavy lids, headache, eyebags and all—and gone to a meeting with jp, a new “associate” (ha, that word sounds dang stiff). After two cups of coffee and a few bites of chocolate decadent, I kinda realized that the real meeting had yet to happen much, much later. owkay. bummer. get me back to my bed, please.

We killed time with chika, chocolate, and coffee while our producer met with some spiffy entrepreneurs at the next table. the place—a country club in one of qc’s poshest subdivisions—was a bit too luxurious for my normal world. the lounge was at the poolside, and the smell of pool chlorine in the air was something that my olfactories had missed in quite a while. that—and the two cups o' coffee--started to wake me up. when we left the place at sunset, I was ready to start my day.

7pm. Pag-asa.
The master plan was for the meeting to be held in Eastwood at 7pm. By 7pm, I found myself in someone else’s house, meeting someone else’s family, in the company of my new "associates" and kitchie nadal’s mom. Aha! so that was one of the reasons why I had risen out of bed this morning--er, afternoon. Kitchie Nadal is a favorite. And the family in that house seemed as awestruck as I was by the idea of meeting the woman who had brought pinoy pop-ternative’s current princess into this world. after much delays and fawnings, we managed to escape at 730, and while you’d think the next destination would be eastwood (finally!), kelangan pa palang dumaan ng abscbn.

8pm. Abscbn.
It turned out that jp had to pick up some posters for the film, ang pagdadalaga ni maximo oliveros (showing on november 30, watch it watch it!) to have them prominently displayed in all branches of his family-owned resto. North-bound edsa traffic was horrible at 8 pm. the barrage of text messages from our eastwood "associates" ("waiting since 7pm, where the hell are you guys??") just about trebled the pressure.

After a not-so-pleasant brush-in with ABS guards who wouldn’t let us into the building (forgot my id and the guards made such a big fuss about it), we finally got the posters. Jp and I ran off to the nearest branch of his resto along Mother Ignacia—a favorite dining spot during my qpids days—and that was when the rest of the evening started to blur.

I saw someone i know having dinner with his friends. The worst person to see at the worst friggin point in this life, but I wasn’t entirely surprised. i had almost felt that he'd be there.

Old habits die hard, after all.

Me: oy. Musta?
Him: oy. (seeing that I was alone. Jp was nowhere to be seen) may binibisita ka dito?
Me: (looking around for jp, flustered) may kasama ko e. (finally saw jp) _________ si jp, friend ni beatlebum (a common friend of ours).
Jp: (laughing) is being beatle’s friend a good thing or a bad thing?
Him: nasan si beatle?
Me: ha? Ayon, magvi-videoke kami mamaya.
Him: mga what time?
Me: mga…1. (he frowns in disbelief) 12.
Him: (smiles) sama naman ako.
Me: (feigning casualness) sama ka. Text ka namin. (turns away, busy-busyhan)

That little chance encounter seemed to have sucked what little energy I had left for the rest of the evening. The lens radically went out of focus. everything that came and went around me—the eastwood meeting, the group dinner—all passed by me in a series of blurs. I hated it. the fact that something so in-passing in the time continuum of my current life could have such an undesirably big impact.

12mn. Makati.
Thank God it would only take another shining moment to bring me back in focus again. At midnight, I found myself in kitchie nadal’s house.

Producer wanted to take kitchie’s mom home before she would drop us off at DISH-ABSCBN, where jp and I were supposed to meet with beatlebum and another friend, monj, to see the spongecola concert. The house was in an apartment compound at the makati suburbs. Kitchie’s mom was a gracious woman; she even asked kitchie to come out (at that unholy hour!) just to say hi to us. Standing before us--wearing her pyjamas, hair carelessly pinned up, face unmade--kitchie was a lovely vision. She’s petite and slender in person, those doe eyes and delicate mestiza features contrasting with the sugar-angst rock chick image. I was momentarily starstruck. While the mom introduced her to each of us, I thought of things to say.


HI, I’M A BIG FAN.

Argh, kitschy.

HI, I LOVE SINGING YOUR SONGS ON VIDEOKE.

Jologs.

HI, I WANT TO DIRECT YOUR NEXT MUSIC VIDEO. PWEDE BA? PLEASE?

Hard sell.

Instead I just stood there gawking at her. She was so cool. If I were lesbian maybe I would’ve fallen in love with her right there and then!

It seemed that kitchie was having a “counselling session” with her Victory Church friends in her room, so she was more than eager to finish the round of “hi’s”. the mom invited us up to the “piano sala” upstairs and played a few love songs. And one of them was kitchie’s “same ground”. Haha! The nerve of me, but i found myself singing to the accompaniment of kitchie’s mom’s piano. couldn’t help it; she did nothing to stop me, anyway.

1 am. Dish-abscbn.
Frantic “where are you” text messages from our friends at DISH finally got us back on the way. EDSA was an expressway at midnight; by 1 am we were at DISH. The crowd—if there had ever been--had cleared and we found beatlebum glumly sitting outside DISH, waiting for lead vocalist Yael (his, erm, sponge idol) to come out of the front entrance. Soon monj joined us, fresh from the men’s room and reeking of vodka (haha, lasenggong monj), and while it was a bit late, videoke was still in the itinerary, no matter what.

After all, wasn’t someone else going to join in as well?

Right in the middle of our second videoke song I got the txt reply. He’d gone home. He was tired. We go have fun. Smiley.

Owkay. It’s just as well. it would’ve taken me days to recover my sanity if he had actually joined in.

Tanga, monj said. Haha. Ang tanga-tanga ko nga. Last night’s videoke was fun, actually. The boys were having fun with each other and I was having fun with the microphone. Oops, that sounds different, putting it that way. Hehe.

I got drunk. Sang screamers. You Oughtta Know. Since You’ve Been Gone. Complicated. Total Eclipse of the Heart. Even the songs that I’d stayed away from, while on so-called therapy. Tell Me Where it Hurts. Especially for You. Haha. One night only. And then we’ll deal with it in the morning.

Normal reaction, the shrink in me says. It was the first time you’ve seen him in, what, a month. The cleancut look was back, the haircut looked nice, you couldn’t reconcile the “hello” smile from the ym-snubbing of two nights ago, but you can’t let a brief back-to-the-old-ways lapse in behavior keep you from getting back in line. Sure, he was every bit as beautiful as you’ve remembered him to be, but the the wall was still there, bluey, and even if it weren’t, nothing about this case could ever change anyway.

Nothing. So stop making it the story of your life.

3 am. Teacher’s village.
We trooped to beatlebum’s apartment after videoke. The boys wanted to watch a coupla downloaded porn films (for harmless kicks, I’m sure. They’re virtual innocents, I’m sure) but even in my drunken state I couldn’t stomach the lurid images. Vomit. So porn was out, another beer was in, more chitchats til everyone just kinda fell asleep on their seats while talking. And to think that I’d thought I knew all there was to know about getting soused, I was in a for a weird occurrence: for the first time in my drunken history, I couldn’t remember much of what I’d said.

Haha. Babbles, most probably. The sorting-out-my-thoughts-aloud kind. Like what I write in this asinine little online diary.

4am. Philcoa.
Another first in a long time: I was barfing drunk. I could actually feel the beer churning inside my head. Alog, alog. A most fascinating, throbbing feeling. I ended up barfing on someone else’s lawn, on the way home. Monj was holding me up while jp was like, euuuw, don’t get any on my shoes. Hahaha! Talk about tumatanda nang paurong. I never did any of these in high school OR college.

5 am. Home.
Retired to bed and kissed the world goodnight just as the sun was rising up. Sigh. I should really change my “fly-by-night”, semi-vampiric ways and join the larks. Because when the shoots start, I’d be forced to wake up at 4 am every single day for 31 days. And I’d want to be in the best working condition possible.