From The Memoirs Of A Non-Enemy Combatant Part 6

"Look, we don't have a lot of time, Boy. I have to be home by four thirty. I have violin." And then she let go of my hand. It was the end of her seductive tickling.

Marianna was right. There wasn't a lot of time for us. I didn't know it then, but our love would last only that one weekday afternoon and the coming Sat.u.r.day.

"You're right," I said. "You're so smart." I placed her delicate hand in mine. I was using what I had learned from her a moment ago. This was a skill that would come in handy much later as an immigrant in America.

My touch was all it took. Marianna rebooted her libido and forced herself upon me. We kissed. She sucked my lips, and I felt her teeth brace mine. She slid her tongue in my mouth as far as it could go. She kissed as if she knew our love would last only half a week. I reciprocated, battling her tongue, twirling figure eights in her mouth, all the while watching Romey, her driver, out of the corner of my eye.

We left the arcade holding hands. Everywhere I turned it seemed like other people were holding hands too, gazing into each other's eyes, tickling each other's palms, secretly transmitting their carnal desires to do it, right now, right away, right there in Megawing 4.

The following Sat.u.r.day, Marianna DeSantos invited me over in the late afternoon for merienda, or snack hour halfway between lunch and dinner. I hadn't been invited to a proper meal, and so my feelings were a little hurt, but still I thought, this was it, no more waiting. I was going to lose my virginity during merienda.

Our family driver, who was actually my cousin twice removed, dropped me off around four. Marianna lived in a gated fort in Pasay City by the American Memorial Cemetery. Her home was a mansion plus detached servant's quarters. A ten-foot concrete wall laced with barbed wire surrounded the property. Romey stood guard at the front gate with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. All of this high-end security made me jealous. Why didn't our driver have a firearm? My family should at least have pretended like we had old money that needed to be protected, even if our five-bedroom in Tobacco Gardens and the Mazda MPV I was driven up in screamed middle-cla.s.s.

Once in the house I was instructed by one of several maids to go straight up. I took off my shoes by my foot heels and ran up the marble staircase that spiraled around the foyer in a great display of wealth. Then I burned carpet toward Marianna's bedroom, where I imagined her sprawled out on all fours across a daybed, waiting for me. She wasn't. She was on the carpet, lying on her stomach with her legs in the air. But what legs, kicking back and forth like some lazy Pilates trainer. I noticed something was different in her voice when she told me to close the door. She seemed preoccupied. In front of her, spread out like giant trading cards, were the glossy publications that would become my life. Thick and thin, text-light and image-heavy: Elle, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, W, Jalouse, I.D. If memory serves me correctly, Marianna was flipping through the September issue of American Vogue, a five-hundred-page extravaganza. I remember the breadth of it, the weight. It looked almost biblical in its heft. She flipped through the pages at an incredible speed, skimming text and absorbing labels. And when a dress caught her eye she would slow down, hold the page still, and take a moment to consider why it spoke to her, a moment that transcended price and brand and the particular waif who wore it. It was between the individual and the clothes. All else meant nothing. This moment of catharsis is what we in the industry refer to as "in the zone."3 It's when a designer takes it to the next level to create something fresh and hot and unforgettable. This may sound very subjective, but there's a definite logic to it. In fashion one gets that je ne sais quoi feeling.

"Pop a squat," she said.

I put down my tote bag and sat Indian style at the bank of the great pool of fashion magazines, next to my Marianna. She continued to flip through Vogue, basically ignoring me. The overwhelming number of heels and Gucci handbags in front of her had somehow sedated her libido. And this was fine by me, because I was excited to dig in myself. I chose an issue of W-what looked to me like an oversized comic-and sat there, reading.

Oh, dear fashion, if I could only remember exactly what I was feeling at that precise moment and re-create it here for the reader. But I can't, technically.4 It was like a perfect dive, where the swimmer's focus is precise, his mind clear, his body controlled, the wind right, and so quickly he becomes one with the pool! That kind of Olympic utopia was a bug that hid deep in between the lines of W, and I caught it. There wasn't one designer or dress that turned me on. It was the whole, not the individual parts. It was the highbrow celebrity culture interspersed among endless pages of ads for Givenchy and Dolce & Gabbana that appeared to be selling s.e.x with androgynous models-the occasional nipple, the see-through underwear, the beauty of young life that seemed so unattainable yet so close, because you could reach out and touch it, it was right there! How could a young boy look at women's fashion magazines, you ask? How could he not? There was desire and fulfillment on every page. Action reaction. I don't know what I want; it tells me what I want. In that magazine alone were eighty pages of images-photos of beauty-broken by the occasional celeb profile, short and brief, followed by more beauty.

Fashion is not only a job, or a pretty face, or a dress that's so next level. It is a lifestyle. It is the only art form that we wear, head to toe, and the only one that automatically projects an image of the self, true or false-who's to say? It is how people see us. It is how we want to be seen. And in the end it is how we will be remembered; otherwise we'd be buried naked rather than in our best suit. "Look at him. He was an a.s.shole, but what a dresser."

I devoured each magazine with a feverish hunger, and Marianna suddenly became concerned. "Are you okay? You're sweating," she said.

"Sorry, I get hot easily." I quickly changed the subject. "These magazines are great. Where did you get all of them?"

"They're fashion magazines. Duh? I got them at the fashion store." Even though Marianna had been born in Manila, she spoke English with the same California rise I had picked up from television.

"Where's that?" I asked.

She looked at me like I was contagious.

"Boy, you're an idiot. There's no such thing as the fashion store. I made it up. Duh? I was testing to see how stupid you were. FYI, you pa.s.sed. Stoo-pid." She rolled on her back with the weighty Vogue, the bible, the one I wanted, and she continued to ignore me. It was strange to see her this way, very unlike the Marianna I knew from school and from our first date, when she had slipped me tongue in the arcade. What had I done to deserve this?

Rather than act out, I withdrew in kindness. Her treating me like s.h.i.t gave me the urge to please her even more. How could I help myself? I loved these fabulous creatures! Girls gave me a sense of purpose.

"What are you looking at?" she said. She could feel me staring at her.

"I'm just looking at how beautiful you are?" I turned it into a question right at the end by adding the California intonation, unsure of myself.

"Really? You don't sound so sure, stupid. Are you sure? Or are you just being stupid?"

"I'm being sure."

"Of what? And how can you be so sure of it?"

"You're beautiful. It doesn't take a genius. Duh?"

This spoke to her. She put down the copy of Vogue and rolled over on her elbow to face me. "You're sweet. Want to make out?"

And like that I was on top of her, just like I had seen in the movies. Marianna was receptive to my moves. We kissed with the same intensity we had established in the arcade. Only now she placed my hand over her chest and added a sensuous thrusting. For the next fifteen minutes we dry-humped our way out of adolescence.

We never had our snack that night, and we never would. Something had transpired between us that broke us for good. Maybe it was that we had gotten too close too fast, but by Monday I was like a stranger to Marianna. She told me at lunch that she couldn't see me anymore; her mother wouldn't allow it. I asked her to run away with me to Cebu, where we could start anew living with my uncle. We could transfer schools, finish our studies, and still get into a good university. At this suggestion she told me, quite frankly, to stop being stupid.

By the time Marianna dumped me, my uncle had shut the doors to his shop in Cebu. He'd inherited all of my auntie's debt, and with no one to collect for her, t.i.to Rono was forced to give his business over to one Ninoy Sarmiento, a ruthless collector who'd floated my auntie whenever she needed the capital. I found out later that he had been one of my uncle's clients. I'd even held the ashtray for him on more than one occasion. Crime has no compa.s.sion, not even for the dead. What ruined my uncle completely, though, was the fact that he blamed himself for his wife's death.

I, on the other hand, turned what had befallen me into a minor victory.

That same week that Marianna broke it off, I begged my parents to subscribe to as many fashion magazines as possible. They

looked at me like I was nuts, like I had spent one too many summers with t.i.to Rono, but they were accustomed to giving me whatever I wanted. W, American Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, I.D.-these would now be mine for the perusing. Whatever I couldn't get-Women's Wear Daily and a few other publications-I had to settle for their Asian counterparts. Soon I was rolling on my bedroom floor in my own pool of glossy high fashion: establishment icons Chanel, Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, Prada, Valentino, Versace, Givenchy; the new stars, like John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen; and the j.a.panese avant-garde, like Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, and Issey Miyake. It was like teaching myself a new language. I began sketching simpler silhouettes and bodies, much less detailed than my earlier comic book endeavors. I gave up supermen for supermodels. I sketched Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell. This was the nineties, remember, the heyday of the supermodel. Soon my room became a shrine to high fashion. Every nook and crevice was covered with my sketches and spreads of fashion editorials hurriedly torn from magazines. I had pictures of the designers in action. Diane von Furstenberg dressing little Kate Moss. Karl Lagerfeld at work in his atelier. I remember very clearly one photo of John Galliano in a cerulean pirate's outfit. His heroic twirled mustache danced with the large feather in his cap as he stood arm in arm with five or six seminude models in a Vegas chorus line. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s were covered with sequin pasties. Whorish black eyeliner masked their eyes. This was an extravagance beyond my wildest dreams! It spoke to me. It said, There are no limits to what Man can accomplish. (And I use "Man" in that all-encompa.s.sing sense.)

I remember the first look I put together. It was for my mother, who was a wonderful dresser with an impeccable sense of style. She was never afraid to wear color, and the palette of her closet was my introduction to bright, lush, crisp garments. I took a sleeveless dress and paired it with a lavender summer scarf-both of which she already owned. To this I added an accessory for her. It was a white hat, a beach hat made of straw paper with a wide, floppy brim-an ordinary style that could be found anywhere in the Philippines. But when I saw a similar hat on Christy Turlington on the cover of Vogue in 1992, I copied it. I tied a deep purple ribbon around the top, inserted a long white feather, a swan's feather, which I had dyed pink with a highlighter, and I manipulated the brim to take the same shape Christy wore on the cover of Vogue. I was able to create an exact replica of Christy Turlington's hat, and it was this hat that I paired with my mother's outfit. My mother, of course, was rather pleased with what I had done. As I said, she was unafraid to take chances. She wore this look to ma.s.s on Easter Sunday. And what did she get but compliments tall and large from all of her friends in the congregation.

It was by imitation that I was able to uncover my pa.s.sion. And it was a constant desire to please others, to win them over, to woo, which drove me.

1. Operation Iraqi Freedom.

2. It was.

3. A phrase first used by Yves Saint Laurent to Karl Lagerfeld. Paris, circa 1975.

4. See chapter, "On Memory."

Love in a Time of War.

Today I wore my sleeveless top outside in the yard. The younger men did not react well to my choice of outfit. Once they saw that I had altered my uniform, they immediately began shouting: "Hamar!"1 "Kafir!"2 The few who could speak English called out: "Hey, foggot! Look here, foggot." Like animals in a cage, these men. One kept yelling out over and over, "Wat don't he hev no slivs? Wat don't he hev no slivs?" He stomped around the communal cage, kicking the dirt with his white plimsolls. "Wat don't he hev no slivs?" The commotion only lasted a minute before the guards managed to quiet them down with threats of non-injurious acts.3 But for me, it was too late. The prisoners had gotten out all they wanted to say. I walked circles in my cage. No longer tempted by the fresh air and the rays of sun, I simply wanted to go back inside.

This is not the first time I have been branded a h.o.m.os.e.xual, oh no. I am quite aware of what I represent to these men. They are completely repressed. Their notion of masculinity is being challenged by my presence. I wish to tell them that in a democratic society, like in New York, all men are of equal standing no matter their race, creed, gender, s.e.xual orientation, etc. Even religious fundamentalists are tolerated to a point. Once I was back in my cell I flipped through my Qur'an, looking for a pa.s.sage about all this-men, equality, something to come back at these animals with, something to say, "Look, you imbeciles. Look what it says so right here in your blessed book!" But I couldn't find an appropriate pa.s.sage. However, I did find a chapter that mentions h.o.m.os.e.xuals, and it was a straw man's argument: Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation committed before you?

To that I answer yes. In Western society ye may practice l.u.s.ts on other men in preference to women, because ye are free to do so, proudly, heroically, and with multiple partners. Someone should drop these men in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan just to teach them a lesson. Would they be shouting, "Hey, foggot wit no slivs!" at everyone who pa.s.sed? I doubt it. If they did, along would come a moment of reckoning. Perhaps a great big bear named Stephen (a stylist I once knew from Rhode Island) would come along, put down his gym bag, and rip out their awful throats.

To set the record straight once and for all, I am a lover of women! Let there be no mistake. From Marianna DeSantos on, I was in for life. I had many girlfriends too, right up until I left for America. Rachel in Cubao, Marlene in Malate, Elisa in Pasay, Filomena in Makati. I had fallen for each of them completely, but it was always so hard for a man like me to keep relationships together. In fashion, where one is surrounded by so many beautiful women, it is impossible to prevent those inevitable jealousies from occurring in the mind of the one you love. So I found that when I arrived in America, I told myself, no longer would I wear my heart on my sleeve, no longer would I swear by love and openly abuse its name. I didn't want a repeat of the hurt I had felt over my ex-girlfriends, or the hurt I had inflicted upon them. Love had burned before, and it would only burn again, and America was my chance to start anew. I would devote myself to my craft without love getting in the way. Sure, I would need s.e.xual fulfillment of a kind-I wasn't a priest-but it would be different now. I imagined myself as someone older, someone more skilled at moving in and out of bedrooms discreetly, someone who could love as much as he wanted and not be held accountable for his haphazard nature.

But then I fell in love.

It was October, the start of a season known only to me for its brooding colors and warm accessories on the runway. Coming from the tropics, I had never before experienced anything like the fall of the Northeast, with its autumnal color palette and ravishing foliage. The farther north you went the more ravishing, and so many New Yorkers christened the season with an annual drive up the Palisades Parkway. What an exciting time in America! It's all right out of a J. Crew catalog. Everyone returns with bushels of organic apples, miniature pumpkins for their offices, and driving moccasins by Cole Haan. I had delivered Ahmed's two suits, and I didn't expect to have any more contact with the man outside of the occasional h.e.l.lo in the hallway. I had money, but not the kind of money where things came easy. Vivienne Cho rehired me around this time to fill in for a stylist who was down on account of some gallbladder stones. Working closely out of her studio on West Twenty-seventh, we quickly became friends. She was young, brilliant, successful, and willing to help me out whenever the time came for me to launch my clothing line. With a day or two a week devoted to her, and with the money I'd made from Ahmed, I could work on my collection most afternoons and take a Sat.u.r.day off to frolic.

I made my first autumn excursion away from the city with Olya and her Turkish boyfriend, Erik, a Harvard man, on one such Sat.u.r.day in mid-October. Erik drove us in his Saab across the George Washington Bridge, and then up the Hudson. We had planned to spend the day at Dia: Beacon, the former Nabisco factory turned museum, and then hit one or two organic fruit stands on the way back. Olya was in a terrible mood, because Erik, her boyfriend of only a few months, was leaving for boot camp in the Turkish army in two days' time. Could you imagine? He was a Harvard graduate and an American citizen, in fact. He even had a semi-Long Island accent. But for him to retain his dual citizenship, he needed to complete the three weeks of boot camp.

(Let the record state that I would be happy to surrender my Philippine pa.s.sport in order to become a proud U.S. citizen. Not that that means anything, since there are millions of people the world over who would do the same. And I suspect some of them are right here in No Man's Land.) When Olya wasn't sitting on Erik's lap on a bench in the museum, soaking up every last bit of him, she was brooding to me in an aside over losing him to Turkey.

"Fall in love, and they go off to die for their country," she said. "This is what happens during wartime."

"He's not going to die," I said. "He'll be back in three weeks. It's just boot camp."

She shook her head. We had lost track of Erik over by Richard Serra, where he'd excused himself to the men's room. Olya explained to me that his bladder was very weak, and this was one reason why he would most certainly perish in the Turkish army.

Then I saw her. Mich.e.l.le. She was alone, walking along an installation of broken gla.s.s. Like a fashion editorial out of the 1970s, she seemed so vibrant in a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress made of green jersey. I wanted a picture of her in front of the shards of gla.s.s for my mood board.4 "Quick," I said, interrupting Olya. "Let me have your camera phone."

"You can't take pictures in here."

"Who will ever know?"

"I will," a deep voice said. We turned around to where a museum guard, a large man in uniform, was leaning against a column.

I sauntered over to explain my situation. "Excuse me, sir, I wanted to photograph a girl standing there. Not the art work, you understand. Would that be possible? With your permission, of course."

"It would be possible. But then I'd have to confiscate your camera."

"It's just a cell phone."

"It wouldn't be the first."

"I get it," I said. "Doesn't matter."

Mich.e.l.le had moved on to another installation. I hurried Olya across the factory floor and found Mich.e.l.le among the gorgeous Bridget Riley paintings, those ma.s.sive horizontal lines from Riley's Reminiscence series.5 I made sure we kept our distance so it wasn't at all obvious that I was staring. Erik rejoined us, and Olya put her arms around him like she wasn't ever going to lose him. She gave him an open-mouthed kiss, and I removed myself by a few steps, hands in pockets. I cleared my throat and felt Mich.e.l.le turn to notice me. I pretended to be involved in Riley's squiggles before glancing over to her. Ah, that game of notice me, notice you!

I continued to track her, a remote observer. Women were always the apple of my eye, as I have said before. All women too. Tall, short, plump, willowy. I didn't necessarily look at them as any ordinary man, objectifying them as men do. (Although I cannot deny what I am, for in Mich.e.l.le's case there was a definite attraction.) I saw my subject foremost through the eyes of a designer. I was inspired by her sense of style, her dress, her flats, her hair, her tortoise frames that lent her a certain intelligence. She was a budding New York intellectual but from another time altogether. I watched her stroke her strong Anglo chin as she contemplated each painting in front of her. You see, every notion of style could be obtained just by watching.

I suppose it would have been easy enough to talk to her, seeing as how she was alone. But I didn't. I held back. And then I lost her in the darkness of the bas.e.m.e.nt gallery among the neon lights and video installations, in a maze of shadows and echoes.

Flipping through my Qur'an, the one that belonged to D. Hicks, I've come upon a chapter on women. There's an interesting pa.s.sage Hicks must have underlined, which seems appropriate now: "Believers, do not approach your prayers when you are drunk, but wait till you can grasp the meaning of your words." With Mich.e.l.le, I would get that chance.

The following week I went hunting for old Vogue magazines from the 1970s, the Grace Mirabella6 years. I bought a stack on Sixth Avenue and flipped through them at my worktable, until I found a black-and-white spread of von Furstenberg herself looking as gorgeous as ever, modeling one of her own wrap dresses. I tore out two pages, one of DVF in the wrap dress and a close-up shot of her with those dark Belgian eyes. I pinned them both to my mood board.

By November an entire wall of my apartment was covered with ideas that had bled well beyond the board. Swatches, paisley scarves, magazine clippings, photos. I was ambitious and productive, sure, but I was lonely as h.e.l.l. Olya had left to do fashion week in Paris and would be gone for the rest of the year. On my way home one night from Vivienne's studio I decided to wander, to try a different route, to get lost underground in the hopes of discovering a nook of the city I had never known. This was how I found so many of the city's charms. Accidentally. And this was precisely how I found Mich.e.l.le. Dumb luck. I caught the downtown number 4, and there she was, standing in the middle of a packed train car reading a paperback, among all of the other commuters. She was just as beautiful as she had been that day in the museum. With her book she was shielding part of her face but had the cover tilted in my direction just enough so that I could make out what she was reading. It was a play, The Dutchman. The one about the femme fatale who stabs her black love interest in the back with an apple core on the A train. The apple was meant to be symbolic. Death by desire. The other pa.s.sengers help dump the body off at the next stop, and the femme fatale goes off into another car to pick out her next horn-dog victim of a prevalent ethnic minority.7 I once again admired her keen fashion sense. She was wearing a vintage frock, tastefully unb.u.t.toned at the start of her breastbone. My, how she wore it all with such womanly precision. (A woman at twenty-one is so rare!) I noticed how much went into her hair for the first time. Its weighty layers seemed endless-I wanted to get lost in them! I traced her ivory legs from her hemline to her flats, where an out-of-place L.L. Bean backpack with the initials T.W.M. rested against her ankle. I would find out later that the initials belonged to one Todd Wayne Mercer, an ex-boyfriend. He took her virginity; she took his backpack. Fair is fair.

She looked up from her play and I held her gaze. Her hazel eyes, nearly colorless in the light of the subway car, pierced through her big gla.s.ses. As I mentioned, from the way she held the paperback tilted in my direction, I suspected she must have already recognized me as the guy who'd followed her from Bridget Riley to Joseph Beuys. Once she smiled at me I knew I'd been given the green light. Do not approach your prayers when you are drunk but wait till you can grasp the meaning of your words. To my fellow pa.s.sengers, I said excuse me and made my way over to where she was standing.

The next stop came. Commuters on and off.

"You've read it?" she said, suddenly. "You're staring at it like you've read it."

"Yes." I hadn't. "The Dutchman," I said. "The quintessential work out of the Netherlands in the last half century."

"That's funny."

"I haven't read it," I admitted. "But I've seen it."

"You've seen it performed?"

"No, the movie with Louis Gossett Jr."8 This made her laugh.

"Anyway, I love the theater," I said. "Broadway and everything."

"I hate Broadway. Yuck. It's nothing but overpriced garbage. Have you ever noticed who goes to the theater these days? Blue hairs and tourists. The theater's dead. I guess that's why I want to be a part of it. I'm drawn to swan songs. What's your name?"

I told her and she laughed again. When I asked her what was so funny she said, "Oh c'mon, the irony. It's like a philosophical comedy. I am girl. You are boy. h.e.l.lo, Boy. I'm Mich.e.l.le."

She was on her way to see her grandmother in Brooklyn Heights. Nana owned a townhouse on Henry Street where Mich.e.l.le would be spending the weekend away from college.

I missed my transfer at Union Square, but I hardly cared.

She told me about her nana, the fall she'd recently taken at her weekly tango lesson, and how Mich.e.l.le planned to read Frank O'Hara at Nana's bedside. "He was run over by a dune buggy on Fire Island," she said of O'Hara. "Can you believe that?" Nana was a poet herself. Quite accomplished in her day, as I understood it. She published under the name Willomena Proofrock.9 "A dune buggy," I repeated, imagining a man sunbathing on a towel, and the recreational vehicle plowing over him. "That sucks."

"It's totally ironic."

Mich.e.l.le had a great pa.s.sion for irony. To her the world was chaotically doused in the stuff. It was one big Oedipus Rex.

"I take it you're an actress?" I said.

"Hardly. I'm a playwright. But I've acted before in plays at school. I'm in the drama conservatory at Sarah Lawrence. Are you Filipino?"

"How did you guess?"

"Our maid growing up had your nose. She spoke Filipino on the phone, long distance. My parents never minded."

"They export them, you know," I said. "OFW's, they're called." I wrote OFW in the air between us. Whenever I was nervous I overused hand gestures. "Overseas Filipino Worker. You know, in some countries the word for maid is Filipina."

"That's so ironic."

The two seats in front of us opened up and we sat down. Mich.e.l.le tended to slouch a little, with her bottom too far out on the edge, her shoulders and neck folded together. At first I thought she did so to make me feel comfortable about our difference in height, but I would soon realize she always sat like this. In truth, it was the only thing about her that was unwomanly. The rest I found ravishing.

I talked about Manila, my dying city. Cancerous, metastasizing, degenerate. Funny, I never harbored such feelings growing up there. My chief objection then was that it wasn't a major fashion contender like New York, London, or Paris. I couldn't give a c.r.a.p about what went on in my country politically. Terrorism, the NPA,10 government corruption-none of these could make me bat a lash. Suddenly I was telling Mich.e.l.le that what Manila needed was a Giuliani type. "Someone who can keep his hands out of the cookie jar for a single political term and clean up the poverty."

She, in turn, told me about New York when she was a kid in the eighties, a time when no one went out on the Lower East Side, and SoHo didn't even have a Prada store yet.

I complimented her on her vintage frock. "YSL?"

"What are you gay?" she joked.

"No, I'm a designer. The color seems like YSL, late seventies. But I could be wrong."

"That's my favorite YSL period. But I think this is Dior."

"That would have been my second guess."