When we were kids, my father organized a lot of family trips, and I was always the last one who got in the car. I had a notion in my head that if I moved slow enough or pretended to be asleep, there was a chance that they would just leave and I would get to stay home. I was under the impression that I had a choice (and ample time to make it) when it came to these things. I always thought he was just kidding when he said, “You are coming along and there is nothing you can do about it…”
Well, actually, there was always one thing I could do about it: I could decide to have a great time…But it was never easy for a bratty little genius who was not conditioned to make a decision without a proper interrogation.
BEFORE I decided to have fun, I needed to cover a few bases.
Where are we going? Why would we want to go there? What are we going to do when we get there? Do I even know how to do that? How long to get there from here? What are we going to be doing on the way? Any stops? I hate stops; can we just go straight there? Except to eat, because we need to eat, right? And to pee, then we have to stop…but where are we going to eat? What’s good there? I don’t even like fish, you know that? Ackley? Is that you? I didn’t know you were invited… So where are we going again? And what’s with the hand basket?
Some years into the future, when I learned to type, I would create a form to fill out: it would have all the pertinent questions, and you would just fill in the blanks. Until that day though, it was as if a porcupine sat on a water balloon...
The question that all these others are leading up to is actually the simplest one: “Are we going to be happy?”
As if someone will ever say "Actually, now that you mention it, no."
It was a flat out Stupid Question. The reason it was a stupid question was because they were ALL stupid questions.
The Super Secret Law of The Road Trip as Foreplay: “Destinations do not matter in a journey because destinations are the end of the journey.”
To put it another way: Unless you are watching “The Hours” or “The Phantom Menace” you really do NOT ever want a story to end.
When I am out with a date and I volunteer to bring her home, it’s not because I want to verify her address before we part ways. And even though, as a nice little side-benefit, I may get to find out how many brothers live with her – and if the window to her room is accessible from a tree branch – to me the real meaning of the words “Can I give you a ride home?” has always been “Can we not go home…?”
There is a reason an otherwise sane man who lives in Alabang would suddenly look forward to that long drive to Novaliches. There is a reason that a person who buys a car so that he can get to where he is going faster is suddenly driving so slowly he would have gotten there sooner if he had squatted on a wheelbarrow pushed by a blindfolded midget with one leg and a lot of phone calls to make.
The only reason I take my date home is so that I can spend the maximum amount of time with her. This will include deliberately getting lost, and this will include the extra fifteen minutes I use to “let me just turn the car around”…and this will include the half-hour parked outside the house wracking my brain for something – to SAY ANYTHING – to keep her in the car. This is why I keep a book of conundrums and a Rubik’s cube in my bag at all times. The handcuffs are a last resort. The leather whip, well, another story...
Eventually she will get out of the car, but the last words as she closes the gate – Innocent Genius, designed to keep the date going - “Call me when you get home…”
I will race home to make that awful silly ludicrous phone call – and I swear you haven’t lived till you’ve had one of these calls at least once in your life. These are phone calls that make my drawn-out crawl to Novaliches with the popular midget a Mardi Gras by comparison. These phone calls are doomed to host what will absolutely be the most pointless and mind-numbingly boring conversations in recorded history.
And I look forward to them...
My father would walk out of his bedroom at midnight groggily stumbling towards the kitchen to refill his bladder and I would be on the couch with the side of my head resting on the telephone handset like it was a travel pillow. He would pause briefly to eavesdrop, but he would hear nothing. He would then (logically) assume that the person on the other end had me wrapped up with some incredibly interesting tale that could not be told at a saner hour, but he would be wrong.
There was only a matching silence on the other end. This would go on for a few more hours. Sometimes that silence would be broken by the words “Hi…still there? Good.”
If you are ever a witness to, but not part of, this telephone conversation, you would have plenty of time to figure out which ceiling beam can support your weight for when you finally decide to hang yourself from it. How do I explain my willingness to engage in what should be the most incredible waste of time any two people can come up with?
In this time, I could drive from San Francisco to Las Vegas…and get married. In this time, I could see four movies… or two director’s cuts… or “The Hours”...
Except this was not a waste of time. This was time standing still.
This was not a conversation. There were no stories to tell – as there was no sequence of events. This was one event: two people enjoying the pure pleasure of each other’s company. This story began and ended with "Once upon a time, there were two people." The only story is that we are here.
If only foreplay could be this way: two people being together with a total absence of Reason or Purpose.
Unfortunately, most people – and by people I mean I – was not brought up to operate this way. I was taught to “Git ‘er done!”
In a world where I am supposed to achieve achievements – and objects (read: women) are objectives – no amount of foreplay can make me forget that you are ultimately just standing (read: lying) in the way! "Being together" is read as “Being, to get her!” I am programmed to pursue you so that I can get you and get off. And if that is not going to happen anytime soon...
...Well, I am pretty sure it was a man who first said “If I'm not coming I'm going…”
Is that enough foreplay? Can we go now? Are we there yet?
I am largely unable to not focus on “getting there.” The irony, when I think about it, is this: If all I want to do is get to home base, I should just stand there and not bother to swing because I am already there, right? Wasn't baseball, like living and loving, a pointless exercise where you were only lucky to end up back where you started? Pointless, until I realize that all the fun is in the first three bases – the anticipation of batting up to face the pitcher and get to first, the thrill of stealing second, the glory of sliding to third and the thought of being really close to scoring… actually, wait, I think I really might be talking about baseball now…
I was a pointless nineteen years old when I was introduced to the virtue of aimlessness. To clarify, I was already a full-fledged aimless young adult. All throughout my high school and college years I was notorious for having a complete lack of ambition.
At these developmental stages where I was supposed to find myself (as if my true self was hidden somewhere amidst the textbooks, chemistry labs, and ballroom dancing classes) I could never answer questions like "What do you want to be when you graduate?" and "Where do you see yourself five years from now?"
Pssh. Another set of Pointless Stupid Questions! How was I supposed to decide on a destination without being provided any information regarding to the rates and amenities such a destination might offer...?
I actually walked around carrying a book called "Living without a Goal." I hadn't read the whole thing, nor would I ever, but I just resonated with the title and wanted to be seen with it.
So yes, I was aimless as they came, but I did not recognize any joy or freedom in it. It was not a happy-go-lucky deal for me. On the contrary, what it felt like was that I was waiting to get lucky so I could be happy. I was waiting for Reason and Purpose to fall out of the sky and hit me on the head like a Steel Safe dropped by Wile E. Coyote. The only thing this much-hyped virtue called goallessness had done for me was paralyze me. I just stood there and looked up.
I was a pointless nineteen years old when I ran away from home.
Before you start to think this is going to be a tale that rivals "Into The Wild" I will tell you right now: this is not that heroic. I was only away from home for a month, and then I ran out of money and met up with my Dad to finally hitch a ride back. Also, during this month of supposedly rebellious independent adventure "away from home," I snuck several visits to my house to grab new clothes when no one was looking.
I did not even have a compelling reason for this attempt at fugue. I was not under any pressure at the time. College had broken for the summer holidays. I had a new girlfriend. I was earning my own real money from working at a McDonald's. I was driving a car. And I was busy being a brat.
I may have been guilty of being happy, actually.
On the afternoon of my take-off, I missed my Aunt's funeral - new girlfriends can make teenagers do this. On the way home to the certain flogging that would transpire, teenagers are expected to fabricate a fabulous work of fiction that would explain why this gross display of negligence and utter disrespect should be excused. There would be emergencies (more than one) - the police would be involved, a cat up a tree, a lady stuck in the tree trying to get the cat out, maybe a dying baby who needed a blood transfusion and a Brazilian Model who needed a backrub...
Not me. I did not have the energy to tell a tall tale that night. In fact it may be accurate to say I had no energy left at all. An immense wave of guilt had driven it all from my soul and all I could suddenly think of was that I did not deserve anything I had. Did not deserve the new girlfriend. Did not deserve to drive around in my Dad's car. Did not deserve to be happy. Did not deserve to be forgiven. Did not deserve to live...
...I decided I would die, but without having access to a gun, a rope, a tall building, or a Tagalog movie, I wasn't sure how I would do it. I get queasy and faint at the sight of blood, so I was not cut out for a wrist slashing - and neither was the butter knife in my hand, now that I think of it.
So I walked out into the streets looking for an 18-wheeler with a broken set of headlights that might do me a favor. Alas, at 3 AM, in a largely residential part of town, the streets were empty...so I kept walking...and walking...and walking. My new plan was to walk all the way from Las Piñas to Ilocos Sur so I could crawl onto a beach and die.
Something snapped then - Well, given that I was looking for ways to die, obviously things were already broken in many other places - but there was new snappage. Something snapped back into place: I remember thinking: "Hmm, if I cut out the part where I die, the Ilocos Idea actually sounded awesome!"
So, after I figured out that the part where I walk all the way there could be a buzz killer and cause unnecessary delay, I decided to get on a bus. And I went. No itinerary and no preparation - just a backpack with three baseball caps and one T-shirt (don’t know why). I had no money, except for a souvenir hundred-dollar bill that I took to the money-changer first thing in the morning. I planned on doing one thing and did something else entirely. I was going to live, after all!
My runaway train brought me to Vigan, San Pablo, Leyte, Banahaw... I slept in friends' houses at first, and I spent a few nights in public parks and under bridges. As I moved more, I wisened up and used provincial buses as my hotel. It was like a (very) poor man's cruise. Movie, biscuits, sleep...wake up somewhere else.
If Life is the journey, is the destination Death? Knowing this - knowing what waits at the end of the journey - who would be dumb enough to purchase a ticket?!?
I purchased many, many tickets. As I hopped on one bus after another without regard for destination, it came to me: Choosing anything got me moving towards something. I could make up reasons to go as I went along, but one thing was clear: I had no purpose but to go. I stopped caring about the destination.
I did not feel alive until the day I decided to die. I was just happy to be going. And I felt lucky to be alive.
The Super Secret Law of The Happy-Go-Lucky Idiot: The fastest way to be unhappy was to need a signal to begin to be happy.
It was like the awkward moments at the high school dance: a good song would come on, and I would make the conscious decision to get up and make that long walk to that area with the special tiles – called the dance floor, as opposed to the rest of the floor – so that I could “commence the dancing”. Okay I won’t pretend. I don’t dance. But if I did, I would not waste time walking to where the dancing is. I would dance wherever I happen to be standing when the impulse hits me.
I don’t think I ever really danced till I got married. And all throughout my younger years, I didn’t smoke, drink or do drugs either. It was probably really because I was a total nerd, but as far as I was concerned it was because I could not appreciate the process. To me it was like consuming raw suffering to get to the joy at the bottom of the bottle – like the decoder ring in the box of cereal that I had to eat through coz I was too stupid to figure out that I could just dump the contents onto the counter and take the prize.
The drinking-with-friends ritual had that exact same awkwardness that I might have felt walking towards the dance floor. After every shot, I would be looking around and asking “Are we having fun yet?” – And the textbook response from everyone else who did not have a stick up their ass would invariably be “Whaddaya mean, we’re having fun right now…”
Wait a goddam second. If we’re happy now, why are we still partaking of this horrible blend of hot-piss and crusty toenails at all? Here’s a brilliant idea: Let’s just all be happy now so we can be done and go home, and we don’t have to spend money, and we don't have to clean up our own vomit in the morning!
Actually, in hindsight, I wasn’t a drinker in my younger years because I was never invited to those drinking parties again.
Once upon a more recent time, we were going to Tagaytay. Just so you understand, imagine the best restaurant in the world, serving the most incredible food you will ever see, smell, and taste. Now call that restaurant “Antonio’s”. Now imagine that it is 12 noon, that it takes 90 minutes to get there, and that they tell anyone who arrives at 1:31 PM to sod off. Now imagine that we are one person short of being on our way, and that this person just called to tell us she was just ten minutes away, which meant that she was thirty minutes away. Now finally, imagine that this trip, which has been planned for weeks, was an old codger who just ate a bagful of prunes…
We started out excited, then crossed over to anxious, to just plain shitty and pissed at our state of Limbo.
We were waiting for the fun to begin. Our signal to be happy was running late.
As I continued to stew quietly in the Antonio's-bound van, our tardy (late, not damaged) last piece-o-the-puzzle arrived. One person said "Let's Go!" as another squealed "Yay!"...and suddenly all the concerns of running late and possibly missing our reservation magically melted away.
On the road to Tagaytay someone had the awesome idea of putting “Once on this Island” in the CD player (me). The women started singing the women’s parts and the men sang the other women’s parts. It wasn’t long before one of the men, tired of singing with a heavy Jamaican woman’s accent, said “Do you have Rent?”
I did not. It did not matter. Someone became Mimi, so I shut off the stereo as the rest of them started to Light That Candle. I quietly prepared to jump in but I never got the chance. We pulled into the parking lot of Antonio’s. It was1:30 PM – on the dot. Oh. Right. We've arrived. The singing had to stop.
We had already forgotten that this particular story was actually about arriving at a restaurant and getting something to eat...
As a wannabe writer and public speaker, you'd think I should be a big fan of "the point of a story." I am, but often enough, I am not.
When I am at the cinema studying the movie posters to try to decide which one is worth two hours of my time, I look first at who is starring in it. This may seem unsophisticated to you, but I also happen to subscribe to US Weekly. Why read a hundred-word synopsis when two words were almost always enough? Hugh Grant, John Cusack, Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Seth Green, Cate Blanchett, Rachel Weisz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Derek Ramsay...
Story does not matter. People matter. Hiro doesn’t stop time, Friends do.
The Super Secret Law of the Lousy Travel Agency and People In Love: "It isn’t where you’re going or what is going to happen, it’s who you’re going to be with that counts."
That means I can be sold a plane ticket to Chechnya if I was going to be travelling with my best friend. That means I can give myself permission to be happy as soon as I know I am going to be in the company of somebody I like. That means I can decide that a movie is going to be good because, hey, Ben Affleck is in it...
I am sure many will disagree with my simplistic sweeping generalizations. First off all, Ben Affleck churns out a large amount of total garbage. Secondly, if happiness was that simple, we would all be happy...but we aren't.
No. No. No. Happiness is complicated! I mean, it MUST be! We must find our way through a nuance-riddled labyrinth that leads to the empty space in the middle, which is actually a mine field that somebody decided to bury happiness in. Fuck me. I didn't bring a shovel. Why couldn't I prepare for this treasure hunt when there were so many treasure maps out there?
Buddha's has the Eightfold Path. Alcoholics have Twelve Steps. The Kabbalah has seventy-two names for God. Mountaineers must climb twenty-nine thousand feet to the ultimate summit. And the Bible has more interpretations than it has pages. How hard can it be to follow a goddam map to happiness?
There is actually a book straightforwardly entitled "How To Be Happy." I cannot fathom the amount of stretching that author had to do to make the publisher happy. If I had been commissioned to write that book, it would have had two pages and very big letters.
Page 1: DECIDE TO BE HAPPY.
Page 2: NOW YOU ARE.
Okay, that's not entirely true, because if you count the publishing info, the title page, the acknowledgments, the introduction, and the "How To Use This Book" section, my book would actually have a hundred and seventeen more pages.
My point would remain though: I am rewarded at the moment I agree to be part of the process. The process, not the result.
I grew up being taught to judge by results. Math contests, report cards, sports, scraped knees, broken teeth... They were the basis for whether I did good or bad. Fortunately, I was also fed conflicting lines like "It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you played the game."
So I guess it was terribly easy for a habitual loser like me to gravitate towards ignoring results. I eventually grew up to become a professional poker trainer, and the first thing I teach aspiring poker pros is this: Professional poker players are NOT result-oriented. As much as poker involves a lot of luck, it is largely misunderstood as a game of chance. Poker is not a game of chance, and neither is the rest of our lives. We play a game of decisions. Our first decision is to commit to play this game the best way we can. In doing this, our chances increase exponentially over the greater population of players who just sit there praying for “their turn to get lucky.”
George W. Bush is not The Decider, I am! I decide I can be better. I decide to pay more attention. I decide to stay when I am ahead and go when I am falling behind. I decide I can win. I decide I will live.
Decisions matter, not outcomes. My decisions make me happy. To be really, really specific and annoyingly simple, I decided to believe this:
The Super Secret Law of The Pursuit of Happyness Without Will Smith: My decision to be happy makes me happy!
In one of the darkest times of my life, I turned to a LOT of alcohol. And in my drunken haze I wrote the song that would snap me out of it: …Spare me, spare me, Looking for joy in a watered-down J&B spending all of my life asking everybody “Are we happy yet?” - Don’t pass me another bottle, there ain’t nothing strong enough for me but me!
What a fool was I! Turns out I’ve been drifting in an ocean of my choice…
One of my favorite things to do now is to sit in the car and drive my loved ones around. Air-Conditioning, music, a window to the world...a highlight moment might be when we pulled over to the side of the road and park the car to eat heavily-salted drive-thru French fries.
As I sit there in the shared silence, I recall being that bratty kid with all the questions (still am), and when I finally asked the most important one – “Is this gonna be fun?” – My Dad’s reply was borne out of pure exasperation. It turned out to be the one that stuck the most. “It is going to be what you decide it is going to be!”
1 comment:
entry to the 2010 palanca awards, essay category...
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