Me and Iago and Manila After Daylight (Part Two)

 

photo courtesy of Badudoy

PART II


My cellphone rings and vibrates in my right pocket. Talk about relief.

I was in the middle of an overpass in Recto, smoking yet another cigarette while chewing yet another menthol candy. Just a few seconds ago a balding middle-aged man approached me and asked for the time. He looked like a forty something high-school teacher or an accountant. Perhaps he worked in a bank or in an office somewhere in the city. Hell, he could be anyone. He could be a physicist or a chemist. He could be a veterinarian or a heart surgeon. He could be a father and husband of five kids and a worried wife. Or he could be a cold-blooded psychopath who preys on the people who tell him the time, cutting his victims with surgical precision while he drinks their blood in a 7-Eleven soda cup. I shivered at the thought. I hesitate. He does have that Hannibal Lectern look in him. He looks too sanitized, too prim with his crisp blue shirt. He exhibits a kind and trusting face. A face you could trust to tell your deepest and darkest secrets. A Hannibal Lectern face. My insides shiver.

I tell him my watch is broken. He stares at me and then at my watch. Three seconds. He could probably taste my hesitation, my slight fear. He probably knows that I know that he wants to cut me and drink my blood and throw my body parts in the Pasig River. Then my phone rings and vibrates in my right pocket. I fish it out and start focusing on the phone. He backs off and moves away. I am relieved. I use my peripheral vision to see if he is still there. He has vanished, engulfed by the buses and jeepneys and people traversing this busy thoroughfare. Talk about relief. Paranoia gets to you sometimes when you walk these streets during this time of night. One has to be sober and alert. It's self-preservation mostly.

It was a text message. From Iago. He's asking where I was. He wants to meet me. I smile. I check my broken watch and it says ten o' clock. I told him of my whereabouts. He replies back a few seconds later – “Be there in a few”. With a smiley face.

Barely audible for people passing by to hear, I say his name under my breath. “Iago.” If I could taste his name under my tongue it would probably be buttery and warm. I am smiling now, forgetting about my encounter with Hannibal Lectern and thinking about Iago. I am smiling for many reasons. One of them is that we met at this very place years ago.

How long has it been since I have known him? Three? Four? Five years? I do not know. All I know is that I know Iago. I know him too well. How I met Iago is irrelevant. Although it is very ironic to think that him met him online, through somewhat unusual circumstances {come to think of it, most of my long-lasting relationships sprang out from somewhat unusual circumstances}. I was going through a twenty-something phase that twenty-somethings tend to experience when they realize they are a few years short of becoming a thirty-something. In one of my sad and futile attempts to assert my humanity and individuality on the Internet, I joined a network of twenty-somethings that long for {re}connection and assurance that life is more than the office space that one occupies, the cubicles that one gets lost to, the board meetings that one loathes attending yet attends to, and the daily grind that one considers the human condition. It's no wonder why people retreat to the virtual because it's plain sugar. It made life livable for some and tolerable for others. Me? I'm just a tourist. I like watching. I like taking snapshots. Then I move on. In a virtual world where every person has a 15 second attention span, Iago was one of the few people that piqued my interest.

I would be lying if I said that I was not physically attracted to him. He was young at the time that I met him. Twenty one? Twenty two? Who knows? He could have been sixteen, but with his devilish and rugged handsome looks that would make grown heterosexual man reevaluate their heterosexuality and their Judaeo-Christian values, I could care less. He had a cult following and I wasn't in any way surprised that he had because he was easy on the eyes. One thing surprised me though, that the fascination went both ways. I figured that he was probably bored.

Did we ever do it? The thought of me and Iago having sex did cross my mind a number of times but I never acted upon it nor have I fantasized about it. I am more prudent, shall we say, in these matters. His boundaries are quite loose when it comes to these matters. He is a pansexual which makes him all the more attractive and even exotic to all the people he has slept with, men and women and the ones in between. It occurred to me from early on that many become infatuated with Iago because of this very fact. I can't say I blame them. He was attractive and sexual in so many levels that that one becomes infatuated with the Iago that was all sex. I was more fascinated at the Iago that wore flip flops and dirty laundry on a work day. Cliché but true. We almost did at some point but we both held back. I decided long ago that I would have Iago for keeps and sex would just mar the whole deal. He and I both knew that.

I could have fallen for Iago. I could have fallen for his youth and his beauty and his sensuality. I could've fallen for his dick alone. But I chose not to. Besides, we were both Scorpios and we were so much alike in many facets that a relationship was out of the question.

Another irony is that I've only met him a number of times. Three in fact. I remember the first time I met him at this very junction. I was nervous at that he would stood me up as he often does in meet ups when he finds that his prospective conquest is not to his liking. I must've smoked a pack that night. He did appear though. Five minutes late. There was no mystery, no second guesses. We drank cheap beer in a cheap watering hole and we talked like we've known each other for decades. We stayed up all night in his flat smoking pot, watching cartoons and eating his week old pasta.

We stayed in touch. He would send me an odd greeting card on my birthdays. I would do the same. We'd talk online when we happen to chance upon each other's online presence which would be a rarity for both of us. I always make it a point to see him whenever I am in the Philippines. I sent him an email about a month ago telling him that I was coming to the Manila for a visit. I never got a reply. The last time I talked with him was over six months ago and he wasn't doing well. He was dating a thirty-something prostitute who was mother of two and who had a nasty crack habit and it wasn't what he thought it would be. Iago is a sucker for relationships. He admits it as he sometimes lets his youth get the best of him. His values may be as fucked up as mine but one thing different between me and Iago is that he still processes a naiveté when it comes to relationships. I can't blame the kid and in some ways, I envy him.

I worry about the kid {he is younger than me}. Thoughts of Iago getting raped in prison ran through my head. His girlfriend probably double crossed and black mailed him to feed her crack habit. Then thoughts of some psychopath bank manager bleeding Iago to death in some crummy motel room replaced the previous one {it could have been the Hannibal Lectern accountant that was asking for the time}. Iago has had one too many shady deals. He tells me about it from time to time and as much as I find his stories exhilarating, I worry about him. If Urbania is my past, this is Iago's present.

This is one of the reasons why I am smiling at a silly text message in the middle of an overpass along Recto Avenue. Talk about relief. I will be meeting Iago tonight. Perhaps that's the reason why I am here. Perhaps. And as I listen to everything around me – to the noise of the jeepneys, cars buses running below, the the chatter of street vendors and the howling of bus barkers and the inaudible conversations of prostitutes and their Johns, I smile. I smile because I could hear the city humming and I am reminded of a Coltrane song that I haven't heard for the longest time. 

To be continued ...