He remembered things he had read. Words strung together to produce an impression of meaning several inches away from his eyes. Truth, morality, beauty, in some recognizable form. When he re-read them several times, their substance vanished, like corpses without souls. They scattered into dust. He was left mouthing wind. Where the words had once lain grandly smouldered the silhouettes of slight cartoons of bullshit.
Elvis the Pelvis began to laugh. He looked down on the counter and at his arms. Pools of sweat had formed in the hollows of his elbows. How long was he in the daydream of his thinking?
He glanced away - to a face, he stared. Two, three seconds. Somehow so interesting. A mouth, a nose, eyes that glittered some accussation or offer of meaning. No reddest monster or black-holing star could compete for attention against the familiar mystery of a human face.
Out of the blue he thought suddenly, "It's not effect I want. It's the truth."
And, days passed in his mind, drunken days, days full of sunshine and vomit, days full of despondency and genius, simple days when for him the sun rose and set without the need of his own personal effort, without the need of his thought and will to divinely move the old star, days and like centuries that passed through his mind, in the few seconds during which he stared at a face across the counter from him, at a face a female face then a male face then at the wall behind the faces then at a shine in the mirror against the wall at the face again the same face or another face into the simple superficial interest of the obvious that lay about all around him like infinite powers that had succumbed to confusion and stood about in the displays of old antique shops in the form of wood faces with wide-eyes that smelled of camphor and seemed to promise the secret of mysteries that vanished with his memory.
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The beer - ah, quickly it was down his throat; shouted for another, felt his crotch the genesis of a hardon. What the fuck! What caused that? Was it the rush of freedom he suddenly felt? The wild whisper that there was really nothing in the world that constrained him. That he knew, in his guts, he didn't care about dying. He felt certain that he would die alone. That didn't bother him. He had seen a friend die, he had seen his father die. He began to think with grim ease and youthful certainty, you always die alone. "You always die," he said, merely.
"Not me," said the fat man, "I lief forever."
Elvis frowned at the intrusion.
The man smiled back with a conspiratorial air.
"Why not?" he said, as if statement of the question were enough to banish death. And, noting the low tide of Elvis's beer, presumed to order a round. Then -
"I am Alfert."
"Elvis."
They shook hands, then exchanged light richocheting talk, while others squeezed behind them, looking or leaving, vendors and adventurers sidling into Raymond's from off the dark street, irrational MH del Pilar, crackling neon and smoky headlights, irritable like a stomach desperate with indigestible things. Alfert had just arrived in Manila and jittery with expectation. While they talked, his eyes jumped around, checking, two fleas agile with a need to scratch skin.
He paid for the beers immediately, taking money out of a fat wallet which he set on the counter a few moments, a quick reward for anyone with desperate hands running by, before stuffing it back into his pants. Of course, the sight of the money made an impression on Elvis. For a while he remained conscious of it and what it could mean to him. He understood then what a poor person in a 3rd world country must feel when along an odorous street a white tourist appears, tall and stupid with dangling camera and dollars in his pocket enough to put fish and rice for a family for a year, and to keep a daughter or son from degradation. Elvis saw the pesos as a flock of gold-tinged birds; they swooped through refreshing showers, flew into clean clothes, into comfortable hotel rooms, into restaurants with wonderful food steaming on tables, and then like desire gone wild they swooped to the airport and round and round in confusion and exhultation, the birds spiraled up into the pale limits past clouds until they disappeared, mere twinklings in the retina of the sky. Elvis experienced a kind of vague feeling like exhaustion.
"Where are more girls?" the fat man asked. "So far I see are street girls. But, ah, you havf been in Manila some months, yes? So there are better girls you know? More beautiful."
"Have you been to the bars on del Pilar?"
"Two, three, yes. But - ."
Baby, a young prostitute friend, tapped Elvis's shoulder. She slurred, eyelids quivered, asking him to buy her a cola drink. Elvis guessed she had been sniffing glue in the dumpyard. A favorite place with the tree and tall grasses and lots of shadows. She held on to his shoulder to keep from sliding to the floor. For a moment she managed to open her eyes, brown, exhausted, the ceiling fan swirling within their ghostly depths. Her lips somehow managed to define the sound, "... cola.." Her head swayed to her shoulder. Her chubby cheeks and round arms seemed to express not health but a surfeit of emptiness, a pressure of helplessness against her human skin. She was cute.
He placed the cold can of coke in her hand.
"Thank you," she said. Her forhead dropped against his chin. With a great effort she turned her back to him and drank a little of the cola as the rest of it poured down her breasts and skirt. Then she struggled through the crowd. She found the familiar street, she found the curb, and slowly sank down, her face erasing beneath the shadow of her head between her bruised knees and soft babyish legs.
He glanced to the hole in the wall to the dumpyard.
Where - Elvis wondered - Where was Mel...?
"I am writer also," the fat man interrupted. "In magazine, in book, in video. In Europe I have many very popularity, buying lots money. The weemin are crazy with me. Such whores, all weemin!"
"What do you write?"
"Travel stoff. Crime. Porno. Anything peeple buy. Lots fuff sex and blood. That's wot they vant, I gief dem. Okay!"
He gave a thumbs-up.
"Now I go Asia und make research here. Much money. Peeple like stay home and read fuff pussy and - ," pumping his hand, "jerking off in dreaming. That's okay too. More dreaming, more money for me!"
"How long will you be in Manila?"
"This morning I arrivf, I told you. But already I haf fucked a girl. Very nice, very young. I slap dem a bit, dats gut for dem."
"What was her name?"
"Pfuuu! I don't know."
But Elvis looked to - Baby's gone. A hawker stood on the curb, macheteing coconuts for thirsty dancers from the Blue Hawaii. One bikini exposed a slice of butt Elvis stared at that calling of flesh, mystically able in its force to distract completely, salty, brown, pouting high, and glistening under the serious neon. Cock twitched within his Fruit of the Loom. Suddenly, again, he studied his precious sheet of empty paper. Damn, murderous, lonely, common, elusive, shit. Mere words. Silly placement of which can make you insane; another correction - faaaarrrtttT, the illusion of real wisdom, harmless pornography. Sticks and stones can only break bones. Words can plant cancer. Ah, sweeet successss!
Money, money, money.
But not for him. Quick as a sneeze - unuttered Fuck! - he hurled his San Miquel bottle out over del Pilar, arcing above the vacuum of the dumpyard, becoming a speck into a vaguely luminous cloud, alcohol rocket. Happening so fast in a busy second in Raymond's that almost nobody almost sober noticed it. One guy staring at the bottle saw only nothing. Ruth the transvestite, seeing the violence clearly, frowned.
"Bad Boy!"
She blew him a cheap kiss.
"Hey," Evis jabbed the fat man's shoulder, "You want a fantastic fucking? Look, there, the girl - ."
"Where? Where?"
"Straight across, there. The one standing. With long hair. Sexy, huh?"
The fat man scratched at his moist, odorous neck.
"She is well-built, ja. I like this, like und athlete."
"Look at the lips. She's very good. Like a vacuum cleaner."
"You havf pputched her?"
Elvis nodded serenely.
"You want research: go fuck this one."
But she, stroking her coconut-oiled hair between her salty breasts, stared at Elvis. A nasty question played in her eyes. Do you want to do it? To me?! Are you crazy with lust? Oh, delicious! But, instead, Elvis indicated with his eyes the fat man, and she said, "Ah," with cool, predatory delight. He was a fresh, white tourist, certainly innocent as a new born snake. Ruth understood reality as well as she understood lipstick, mascara, pushup bras, and the side-effects of advanced hormone treatments.
She abandoned the sour-sweating Australians who sneered at her body, using that same body to part the crowd, playing with the unknown that she was, she loved the thought of her female flesh, like the flesh of an angel no one believes in, like the flesh in a sensuous photograph, and she pouted and wiggled through the crowd, electrically alive to the confusion she created and it was delicious to be desired, of her skin being licked and lusted for, the pure angel of her irrational pussy, and love had nothing to do with the itch the red-lighted tickle of it. It could make her scream. There was nothing better than a pair of eyes upon her shaking tight ass.
"Yessss?" she hissed.
The fat man seemed stunned. Elvis enjoyed the dangerous moment and wondered when the fat man would know, when the false perfection would hit him through the smoke and the noise and the beer. A sticky barricade of empty San Miquels stood on the counter before him. Ruth insinuated her lively hips between his knees.
"Ah, you like my teats! Very nice, ano? It's fun to suck them, really. You like? Come on, naman, let's go!"
"Vait, vait - nut sooo fask. Vhat's your name?"
"Who cares? Look at the body, man," Elvis said, "Look at that fucking ass!"
"Oy, no dirty talk," Ruth said, fluttering her eyelashes, "Please, no facking, sacking. I am a very good girl."
"Maybe you are too big und strong for me, ya," the fat man said.
"I spank your fat ass, you like, I whip you, what you want."
"Ah, so you are dominatrix!" he said, excitedly, squeezing her buttocks with his free hand.
"What you want, that's my name."
"So, you are from Manila."
"Of course, darling. Aeei, how smart, talaga."
She rolled her eyes, pinched his cheek, saying something in Tagalog. It was probably insulting. But he grinned.
"Come on, I bite your ass," she said.
"She's really gut, ya?" he asked Elvis.
"She'll bite your dick off!"
"Achh, no, no - !"
Alfert feigned horror.
"I sack it off only, darling. Really, not bite, come on. Don't worry!"
A firm tug brought Alfert's drunken leer off the stool.
"Enjoy yourself!" Elvis chuckled.
She gripped his hand marinated by sweat - pulled him behind her into the smoke from a dozen cigarettes. He stumbled at first, then kept up with her. She strutted out, so men and perplexed women snapped their heads to consider her. Alfert's eyes were glued into her rolling ass. He whistled with a smirk his appreciation of their oily, promising friction. She pulled him in through the crowd, glancing wildly at herself to the mirror on the wall, smiling at the fullness of her own private thrill that the men could never know. Oh, how only she understood her delicious lips, her long delicious legs, the uncannny warming that only she could feel! It was a mystery that she accepted as an insult to the ignorance of mere men, of anyone who simplified the world out of fear. They crossed del Pilar street. Nearby, along the tree-lined Soldado street were the short-time hotels. Ruth's imagination rushed ahead of her:
She leads him up the steps to a room. They enter the room. Before Alfert switches on the light, as he is anxious to do, to flick the tiny lever by the door, he vaguely understands that the moon is shining through the window casting leafy shadows so fluttering on the wall behind the smoky, rigid bed. Of course, this means nothing at all, yet he hesitates a moment to notice the shadows in the fatigued light. There is something he might wish to remember, but he can not call it beautiful. The darkness like a dead and heavenly world, the smell of grassy decay, of an earth garden, of weeds in which butterlfies lie rotting, the breath of a sperm-filled universe. A click. The bulb flaring as a newborn star hurts their eyes and exposes the room. It is a precisely neat yet simple box. By the bed is a square table, a Bible provided by a religious fraternity. The walls are arithmetically spotless. At once, Ruth talks against the sterile blaze of electrically induced illumination. The minimal box of the room is reduced more, even, to kinds of gray so it seems an object in a particularly autistic dream in a painting hung on the wall of a remote but extremely safe museum of monochrome photography. She argues with her fingers because, now, alone, she is afraid of the echo of her singular voice. She touches his body, tickles the dollars in his pocket, the beer in his stomach, the semen in his balls covered with odorous hair. She flicks the switch, returns the dark leaves upon the wall. Alfert moans as if in response to an order he can not disobey, a line in a story he can not change, so his voice comes somehow articifial like the theoretical laughter that chuckles in fiction. In the air there is the faint odor of mosquito spray. Ruth glances to the bed. It is like a bleached shell in the wary moonlight. She manuevers Alfert towards it and falls with him on the loud, starchy sheet. He expects things, savoring his feverish silence, and toying with innocence he stares at the wall behind the bed, waiting for what he knows; nostalgia and beer combine to thrill his memories. He arches his head into the bed. Soon the moonlight flickers. The shadows on the wall intertwine, changing, dissolve and reform with each impulse of breeze into shapes beyond any hope of his control. The shapes blurr hopelessly, then coalesce for an instant in sharp clarity as Ruth's legs, smooth and muscular, join in the shadows ...
