Chapter 2
The Second Joyful Mystery – The Visitation
At 3 am, Mario was awakened by sounds emanating from his kitchen. He hears soft clanging sounds of pots and pans and someone humming a tune – a Billie Holiday or maybe an Ella Fitzgerald song. He kept thinking about the tune and which song it was, and he was sure he’s heard of it before. Forgetting the fact that there was someone rummaging through his stuff in his kitchen, he lay on his bed for a minute or two thinking about that elusive song. Then finally giving up, he told himself that he would eventually remember it after a day or two. And besides, it was 3 am and it’s been a known fact that human memory doesn’t function well at this ungodly hour. Then he realizes that he had been doing it again – losing track of one mental thought by segueing to another mental though that is somewhat associated to the primary thought. (Mario is like that, a one minute attention span kind of guy. Compared to Mario, a fly has more mental focus on things at hand – like the turd waiting to be feasted upon, for example).
He mentally kicks himself for losing track of the pressing matter at hand. There was someone in his kitchen and from the smells of it, that someone was cooking.
Did he forget to lock the door? Is it the building manager? But what the hell was he doing in my kitchen at 3 am? Am I dreaming? This must be some weird dream, Mario tells himself. He tried to pinch himself, thinking he was in some weird dream that David Lynch probably directed but when he felt the sting of his pinch he realized that he indeed was awake, and there was someone in his kitchen.
Scared off of his wits, he tried to summon his inner caveman and took hold of the nearest blunt object on his bedside table – a big fat aroma therapy candle, lavender scented, decorated with sea shells. He figured that he could try to whack the living daylights out of this intruder or whatever that is in his kitchen right now concocting those aromas and humming that tune which he couldn’t, for the life of him, name.
Carefully and quietly, Mario creeps outside his bedroom and stood beside the wall that leads to his small kitchen. The kitchen light is turned on, Mario notices. He could still hear the intruder humming a nice and clean and full tempo hum and it seemed to be getting louder... or closer. Then the humming stops. And so did the soft sounds of pots and pans from the kitchen. His apartment becomes still and quiet. He could hear his heart beating. A bead of sweat slowly descends from his forehead to his left eyebrow. For the first time in his life, Mario is scared shitless.
This is just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream. Mario repeats the words like they are Hail Mary’s. His whispers break the silence in his apartment and when he realizes that he’s already the one making the sounds, he stops and slowly creeps sideways toward the kitchen door, prepared to strike the would be attacker with the aroma therapy candle.
Grasping the candle with both hands, he holds his breath and mentally prepares himself to face the kitchen door and strike. Then he realizes that he was not alone on this side of the wall. He hears breathing from his left. It was surely not him for he was holding his breath. He could feel the warmth of the breath beside him... He’s more scared than ever. He was going to die. For sure he was going to die in his flat in dirty underwear. In his mind he pictures all his friends and family and all the people that touched him. Each of them, one by one, he tells them goodbye. Life is just cruel he says to himself.
“And you are one melodramatic fuck. Stop picturing your friends and family and your past bed partners! They’re bombarding my head like crazy. I swear, you people watch too much day time soap operas!”, a sweet feminine voice on his left said. “And to be honest, the picture of your grandmother cooking in the kitchen followed by a naked 18 year old Billy sniffing your jockstrap doesn’t really go together!”
Mario turned around and in the faint light that came from his kitchen, saw a heavy set brown skinned woman, wearing colorful ethnic clothing topped with what looks like an African head dress. She stands a couple of inches shorter than Mario, one foot slightly in front of the other, with hands on her waist and is smiling like she is the reigning Miss America.
Mario screams out of surprise. He didn’t even think of hitting the woman in front of him. He just screams and screams. But he noticed that no sound was coming from his vocal chords. He stops and absently drops the candle in his hands and screams again. Again, no sound. He looks at the woman.
“Now, I will give your voice back if you promise, IF YOU PROMISE not to scream,” the big brown woman said with a motherly tone. “You promise?”
Mario nods shakily. He’s sweating like a pig on a hot summer day.
Then the woman says, “No you’re not being truthful, now Mario. Something tells me that if I give your voice back now you’d scream and wake the living daylights out of the people in this building,” she said with eyebrows raised while wagging her finger. “You do know that if I can take off your vocal faculties that I could also take other things from you?”, she tells him. She waits at the stunned Mario to respond with an akimbo pose and she adds, “Yes, Mario, I know your name.”
“But how?”, Mario asked the woman then suddenly realizing he relinquished his voice back. The woman doesn’t feel threatened anymore and apparently, so does Mario. He is curious.
The woman softens and tells Mario, “I know many things about you Mario. I know about your mental segues, and your interest in elevator music, and your fascination with porn and your masturbatory activities – TEN! What the hell were you trying to prove?”, she scolds, “Even porn stars don’t ejaculate that much!”. Then she softly adds, “And I also know about what happened yesterday morning at the kindergarten.”
Mario hung his head upon hearing those words. He’s not really shameful, but he felt naked in front of the fat brown skinned woman. Then a stray tear drops from his right eye to the floor. He’s shaking. He knows that he’s on the verge of crying or bawling even and he is trying to suppress it. He takes heavy breaths and his nostrils are flaring and he feels warm all over. It’s always like this when he is about to get an emotional outburst, and he hates it. He cries like a deranged widow, truth be told. But he rarely cries. In fact he hasn’t cried in a long, long time. Ever since that day, he hasn’t cried. And in a flash as if triggered by some earthquake, memories suppressed came rushing in and blended itself to the present and everything that he was at the moment. And at that moment, Mario admitted to himself that he was in fact, one lonely and sad individual.
Then the tear drop on the floor became two. Then three. Then four. Then five. The floor to which he was standing was slowly starting to form a small puddle. Mario was crying for the first time, ever since that day. Loneliness was pouring out of his eyes and his skin and everything that was him.
Then something happened. He felt being embraced. The fat brown skinned lady who triggered this flood of suppressed memories and tears was embracing him. A warm embrace it was. He felt being lifted and being removed from everything that was of his body and of his apartment. He felt so light. So light that he now knows what a feather, airborne feels like. It’s like his outpour of sadness was replaced by something else. He felt happy but not laughing or smiling. He knows that he was feeling something different. Something he had never felt before. The closest feeling that he could associate with this was orgasm during sex. In his 29 years, he only had a couple of orgasmic sex. One was when he was 16 when a 45 year old guy gave him a blow job in a run down theatre in Manila and the other one was his first ejaculation when he was 13 back in his old room masturbating to Jockey underwear ads on the Sunday paper. Both were all quick, barely 20 seconds the longest. Now he feels like he was having a thousand ejaculations at the same time, only that he was not ejaculating through his penis. He was ejaculating all over. His eyes, his pores, his nails, his ears, his orifice, and every opening in his body were ejaculating except his penis. His whole body was convulsing. His mind felt like exploding. He was making incoherent sounds but he understands what he was trying to say.
Don’t make it stop. Please, don’t make it stop. I love this feeling, so don’t make it stop. I want to stay in this state so don’t make it stop.
Then everything around Mario went pitch dark.
