The traffic crazy, Elvis waited to cross del Pilar to Raymond's Fast Foods and Beer Garden between the Ermita Hotel and a barbershop next to which brooded a foreign exchange cubbyhole next to a sequined bikinis shop next to the Aussie Go-Go Bar and so on past the corner beyond Rosie's Diner and the sidestreets and dusty trees and the mad woman squatting in the gutter clawing flies out of the air with fingers wrapped in aluminum foil and Elvis felt his eyes being watery and prickly with the fumes of the rattling machines speeding, slowing, jerking past and the passengers in the jeepneys appraising him, white raggedy man scratching his head and yawning and pulling up his pants and then peering deep into the traffic, by the Yellow Butterfly Bar, when suddenly its door snapped open and a girl kind of staggered out with a plate with a mountain of rice vibrating against the envy of gravity, just rice with a single smoked fishbaby whose powerful aroma almost ignited in the dazed sunlight as she stood swaying, constructing a great rice ball with her peeling pink fingernails, blinking eyes, wild hair black as the tar of the street, and a brain you could tell exerting all its arithmetic power to solve the riddle of her fingers' rebellion and her hips bumping softly, grinding in a dreamy orbit of erotic eternity, a new dancer, stuffing her mouth with the white rice and fish flakes, the hungry taste of it making her heart beat faster and her eyes flutter like bees in a cloud of pollen and then she noticed him and his male transformation of girl beauty into lust, of moneyless helpless innocence into hot desire, and sudden anger and regret blushed in her face, so she dropped hard out of the sky.
"Fuck you," she said. "Fuck you."
She licked a grain of burnt rice from her sneering lip but then smiled somehow, remembering what she seemed to be, and Elvis blew a kiss at her then glanced wild to the traffic as his hand in pant pocket felt the golden emptiness there and the semi-liquidity of his cock tentacle in which the girl's soft hips were rolling slowly, and he stepped off the curb.
"Hey!" she said.
He glanced back.
"Give me money!" she said.
She pulled up her dress.
"No money," Elvis shrugged.
"My name is Grace!" she said, "You come later!"
Jeepneys tumbled past.
"You remember me!" she said.
He waved away a jeepney stopping.
"You never forget me!" she said.
"Never!" Elvis said, and ran.
Over the sticky asphalt and mango skins, torn sheets of newspapers, fishbones, and fish eyes like gnawed-on pearls, resting on the blackness that seemed a residue, a glistening phelgm, left by the night in a last fit of coughing. Upon achieving the opposed sidewalk, his heart thump-thumped keenly, his lungs flexed in pain, his throat felt the hot air, and perspiration licked down his neck.
He was reminded of his mortality. But finding himself in Manila, the air at once felt sweet, life a wonder, electric, a free dream-blossom in his brain away from the infuriating cliches of genius in America, the sterility and murder allegedly called home. He pinched his arm hard, keenly felt it, saw the dark blood trickle over his smelly flesh, and felt assured he was awake. A mix of hate and love rose a thirst for beer. He walked into Raymond's open to the street, nodding to Tony at his barbeque stand engulfed in a heavy odor smoke of chicken livers and ash which wafted past shadows and sunlight, walking into the wind of swiveling fans and eyes that greeted him. Open 24 hours, Raymond's was the place to watch the notorious street. Be there, look, drink, high in the craziness, no fucking air of home, no hamburgers, just ratburgers, batburgers, pussyburgers, silky brown legs, best icy beer in the world, and cheap as fire in hell. Jeepneys - passengers gawked at you - passed by slowly - you gawked at them, and judgements were expressed on their faces, and yours, like hushed expletives of bad poetry.
Who might sit in Raymond's?

Bodies. A time a cat might jump onto a stool, a chichuachua, a deaf mute, a moth alights on the bar, any body, a marinated thigh from Tony's stand. Expatriates. The famous bay nearby ages, so seamen scented with oysters and machine oil come. A Norweigean retiree who speeds his days reading science fiction, rides a bycycle to get to Raymond's, of no significance whatsoever. An American, with his Africa whore he dresses in panties of an 8th grade girl and buttshort skirt, counts his beers, the more the quicker, as his eyes narrow, she grows younger and blacker, her innocence turns white hot, she crosses her lascivious legs, her knees glisten like oil on lust, pumping langurously, slowly, with a blinding vanilla smile. He forgets what happens. They wander in: the backpackers, street characters, and beggers, and talents of fluid gender. In Raymond's, time was like a precocious fruit going ripe very quickly, it seemed to be there dangling in your face, getting browner and browner, muskier and muskier, softer and softer, until finally you had this small pool of sugar on the counter in front of you, too sweet to taste, the putrid abstraction, too tangible now to be of any real importance, only the memory of it left, the spectacle of eternity melting before your eyes and the faint scent of bananas going bad gone too. The atmosphere dizzy with a sense ... of some theory ... some information of cruel importance ... if only it could be heard, named, and if only it lasted, even just the micro-second of a splited atom, like a frozen perfect quantum wave.
But it was yet too early for all that.
So Elvis this bare morning passed along the counter as the service people behind it greeted him. He sat down on this stool and one of the counter girls, Josie, right away came to him, one finger raised, and recited a question whose answer she knew, "One beer?"
Mandi, the boss of the morning shift perched on the icebox reading a comix book about vampires, scowled at him.
"On my tab," Elvis said.
"Sure," Josie said, "You are rich."
"Thank you," Elvis said, "And you are beautiful."
"But how come you dress this dirty?" Josie said.
"I'm making a movie," Elvis said, "Costume, you know. Have to get in character."
"Bullshit!" Mandi said.
Josie's upraised finger wavered. She looked at Elvis in sudden doubt.
"Your problem, huh!" Mandi told Josie, then in Tagalog something which made her laugh.
"Yeah, I'll really have to pay," Josie said, "I got no money."
Elvis turned to her, nodded gravely, then his eyes swept towards the street, as if he were appreciating the moment. Farting traffic, babble, a long goldless day ahead. His eyes swept to the bar shiny with slanted morning light, flies marching in unison towards grease by a plate of old noodles, then he said, "Don't worry."

Josie brought cold San Miquel, then went back to washing glasses. Elvis, alone with his private numbers, doing his secret arithmetic of the immediate moment wherein everything was zero, breathing gladly in the artificial but only universe in which he found himself, watched her hands work, a tiny soap bubble on the tip of her nose glistening the quivering blue of a divine and comical cleanliness.
Sliding by, sliding by, the ticks and tocks of moments, mind wandering through them all unstoppable and blind a jello-thing wriggling through unstable boundaries of seriousness and farce, of intense pleasure and saddness, the bitter and the sweet of fake existences, pleasure rendered into words annoyed Elvis like a sore on his penis, sterile penis, clinical penis, with a widening cavity of pus whose only cure must be an injection of music concentrated from mushrooms and flowers of incredible filth and fertility long ago lost in the whitening wake of a dream gone wildly confusing and suddenly real in the palm of his hand that he rubbed on the defrosting bottle of beer to smear off the dirt and ink from newspapers in the dumpyard and sniffed deeply his fingers the soiled odor of print and weed-juice and come of a forgotten masturbation and he smiled to know for certain the cliche of being good to be alive. Dizzy, it made him dizzy. And then the putrid wafting criminal whispering of art, like a serial killer's disturbingly common breath, moved his fingers like cold lizards wandered across his chest to his pocket, touching the ballpoint pen that it was still there with its talisman of ink and lure of potential that whosoever has a pen possesses the possibility of greatness and fame mere fingers away and mere thoughts away, it only needs to be wielded and used on a virgin paper onto which a flood of genius might wash from which a lotus of staggering vision might rise out of some sorry shit of pride.
His fingers made quicky love to the nob of the pen, a lewdness he wished denied while awake. The ballpoint came from the Mercury Drug Store around the corner on Padre Faura street, with a donald Duck head attached on the end. The beaked head yellow and grinning maniacally in the sunlight. Melanie had laughed, doubling over when she spied it, loudly and unrestrainedly, seriously so silly in the pocket of a grown white man who should appear dignified and aloof knowing everything to know in the world and yet there was the duck, a cheap duck, so for a few days after, she determinedly called Elvis, "Quack Quack the Writer".
At first he was amused but her repetition of the sound immediately upon seeing him and her smart giggling soon became irritating. He told her to stop it and the next day, after a day in which the Quack sound surged to a certain shrill tone of anger, she did.
That happened a few days ago.
Elvis pulled a boogger out of his nose, smeared it over the edge of the bar, then rubbed his nose with the back of his hand of his moist finger.
Pllbanggooo!
A Marlborro pack slapped on the bar.
"Hey, man, wanna a smoke?" grinned the cigarette boy.
"No!"
The boy asked every morning and knew the answer and asked, only, he must try, for things might have changed. This morning. Now, again, he snuggled by Elvis one butt squeaking the stool, his shoe box of cigs on the bar and an arm slung languidly by flicking a bic lighter on, off, click, flame, click, flame, grinning, and then, "I am hungry. You buy me barbeque, huh!"
"So am I," Elvis said, "I am starving to death."
"You bullshit."
"Hey, it's true."
"Suck my dick."
"Suck your own dick."

"Can not."
The real world, to which the boy belonged and which Elvis was passing through, was as tangible as death and certain as having an orgasm at least once in your life, but whose clarity was only the clarity of a moment that was a jewel you were trying to see through and of course it was impossible to see through a real jewel without any distortion imposed by its density or beguiling hue, unless the jewel were fake, only made of clear glass, and then you easily see to the other side behind the glass, behind the jewel, the immense detail and superficiality and so be acclaimed a genius of that lonely and dictionary-like world. On the streets of Ermita were no rules to believe. The names were melodious. MH del Pilar. Mabini. Padre Faura. Scondido. Et cetera. Names of the past of the Spanish colonial times when the conquistador stole and slaughtered through the brown land drooling after illusions and pussy and screaming about a god who knew nothing of the yo-yo or coconut palm beer and loved to die. So, now, Jesus might be seen vomiting by the Yellow Butterfly and the people strolling by and sexy Grace comes out to take his hand to kiss and the people might frown and curse and blood might stop from his wounds and he become brown and happy and the people dance and curse around the disgusting miracle of a life without end until miniskirts fall a long, senseless laugh.
"Hey, wanna smoke, c'mon!"
The boy pestered him.
Damn repetition! Ignorant bastard! Didn't the fucker understand?!

Elvis looking across M.H. del Pilar. The hole in the wall hazy with jeepney smoke. Behind it Melanie asleep probably, after being fucked, whatever, the whole night with a tourist and paid, her tan legs licked and her allured mouth frenched and inspected thoroughly, and now was lost in the peaceful breathing of sleep that Elvis imagined from the other side of the wall as she was in the weeds with her eyes closed and her ears closed and her body frozen and forgotten deep in the pleasure of sleep and in the hot hot sun and perspiration cascading along her cheeks beneath the buzzing flies, but how could anyone sleep like that, and Elvis wondered about it, because he knew it himself. Amazing. That's what happiness can do.
"I will never smoke," Elvis said. "Remember, okay, remember!"
"Tomorrow, okay?"
"Never! You understand Never?"
"Marlboro number One!"
"Never!"
"Okay, man, see you."
The boy patted him on the arm and walked away on the street and just before he disappeared he turned to Elvis again and called out, "See you, man!", and disappeared and Elvis saw him finally go and at once relished half the bottle of good San Miquel, cool and tasty and alone, and shifting his gaze from the open street saw Raymond himself, the owner, come in the back door out of the alley where squatters built their cardboard shacks and naked babies played. Raymond strode regally, was how he walked, and somehow he did look like a Roman emperor, a handsome man with heavy gold ring and chain around his neck, he was tall too and spoke softly, and apparently didn't drink but often looked high and silent, striding past the pool tables at the back of Raymond's towards the bar counter where he reached behind it and under for any mail and a few envelopes came up, he settled himself on a stool, thus Josie immediately put a coca-cola by him as he cut the first envelope with a razor, Elvis heard it, or the crackling of paper, and smelled the newspaper print on his fingers around the beer bottle to his lips, eyes jerking about and out to the magnetic street.

He recognized across it three friends of Melanie then acting up, swivelling their hips for each other, walking ahead first one then the other, legs loose as marionnettes, they hooted at passengers in the jeepneys, blew kisses with abandon, accussing everyone in sight of wanting their bodies, of course, laughing hard so their mouths were full of wowing girlish language and gigglish power, lord, so young yet, some lipstick on, skirts loose and tight, they had smiles like all things young and that laughter that could stun saints and prick up the ears of dogs, butts and teats oiling their clothing and toying with the people's glances some embarrassed some hot with knowledge, when the girls began hopscotching and their skirts tickled up and down their thighs and fascination, girl sounds, and smells wafting of sun-sweat and unwashed skin, when, suddenly, they leaped off the curb and zigged-and-zagged across the traffic singing "Rock and Roll Will Never Die .." from their thin and famished throats against such hammer motors rolling of motors. Poison fumes. Towards the Fast Foods and Beer and Elvis cringed nevertheless.
"Oh, oh."
He didn't want to - if they saw him, it'd be the questions. It never tired them. Again, tell us again. Just a little. The sun is a bit higher now. The shadows inch tighter to the wall. It had gone like this: Baby Elvis saw his first human face in a vast white and scintillating room of cooing and shuffling sounds in California and lumpish shapes that changed and disappeared from him and the plop-plop-plop of steps and, after a brief time of juvenile delinquency, years later of course, he settled in to get a degree from Berkeley - in cosmology, which seemed truly important. The bobb and weave of Greek and alphabetic symbols in the mathematics soup offered him a kind of aesthetic thrill that he imagined as a sky-blue-like elegant feeling, the way seemingly ridiculous and unseen conclusions were reached from pretentious conversations with formulae about the innards of stars and how the speed of light never ever changed as if it were a kind of indelible ink drawn across the universe, a signature of ownership that identified its rich god from others. But during graduate school something happened, it seemed all of a sudden, and he could not point to question it exactly as it hid and joked through his life, a jack-in-the-box thing but obviously of killing importance, and, one wanton moment in bed one particularly beautiful morning, as in a fairy tale, he realized that he didn't take the galaxies very seriously any more. Whether space was curved like a saddle or like a donut, he didn't care.

The Big Bang had inflated to a whining ping in his curiosity. And, the ultimate fate of the universe, fuck it. He wasn't interested in the truth. He was interested in laughing at it. Yet still he had a need to show how hard he could laugh and - how deep, and so he had to write, for it was not music or paint that his talent spoke in, talent that was his pride and joy that set him apart so nicely from the rest and that inflamed the trajectory of his conceit like a missile in the sky leaving a trail of unnecessary fire for an audience of envious intellects used only to amateur profoundities. He rented a room on Haste street and went after his tormentor in white heat. The room looked over a garden and had tropical blinds that chopped up the sun and the moon and allowed the stars to roam free and it smelled of dry bamboo and he slept under a Japanese lantern around a red bulb that gave his thoughts a whorish splendor. He cut open his soul on the thin page, pinned in it the lungs, the tongue, of his imagination. He wrote down the truth. His Jewish girlfriend was impressed, sometimes frightened by his attacks on obscurity and by the clarity she could not seem to understand in which there in the truth of things as he saw, a sense there was yet hidden another nation of reality still deeper and where in that alien canyon of light and brilliant shadows was a kind of fearful presence, as of a tense little monster that winked and whispered and played hide-and-seek with you and which sometimes as a tease allowed you to sense, not actually see, the smell and the metallic slime of its obscene and perfect tail and fart in which it seemed all the truth of the world dwelt in the only splendor you knew; and as she read and sought to understand, she was disturbed with a helpless anxiety, like a worm kissing her heart. He laughed without malice. He wrote essays, short stories, novels, plays, even a movie script. His discipline seemed proof he could achieve anything. But there was one problem. No one was buying. Rejection slips piled up. So, obviously, he needed more sucking, fucking in his stories, blood and killing, thrillers with the CIA and drug lords, draculas and cannibals, and screaming ghosts, or aliens married to leggy blonds? Of course. He needed to bump and grind to get an editor's erection going. Well, he didn't dance. If the universe bored him, how could some middle-aged masturbator sitting in an office with an ugly secretary compete? More than ever, he felt stifled by the ordinariness of life, the great judgements of strangers, the rewards that never came, the little things that meant so little. The world, however, was a big place. And a life-time was so small. He bought a discounted ticket to Southeast Asia, and from Bangkok a postcard of the Temple of the Dawn he sent to "the planet earth, c/o poste restante, san francisco, california, u.s.a."
"Fuck you," he wrote in it.
Weeks later, following the gossip of what was the cheapest city in the tropics, he found out in Manila. The street.