Peter

Peter got married sunday last week, it was a grand wedding, terribly grand. I was one of his groom’s men though I am alwyas very keen about being seen in wedding pictures, and grand weddings always come with a sea of audience where my shrewd personality will eat me alive while standing in front of all those people. But peter was my friend for 18 years already, and hell I should be there for him.

Peter and I became friends when we were 8, I was just transferred to his school and I didn’t have any friends there and it was one hell of a lousy childhood. I always ended up reading books during class breaks by ernest hemmingway, jules vernes and especially this book by charles dickens –great expectations (note: I was just 8), peter saw me and he would pity me and he would take me out to play with his friends, though I could see they weren’t too happy to have me around, one thing is because I run slow.

Peter met ellaine when we were 14, we were in high school. We both went to this school fair and somebody set him up for a blind date with this girl. And after his date, he kept talking to me about ellaine and later that night he called me up asking me to go back with him to that school fair to find her. He started writing to her (well copying from drafts that I would write to him) we would go to bookstores and rummage for flowery pads where he could write, plan his conversation when he would call her up, all those crazy things adolescents do when they fall in love. And boy peter’s mother loved listening to me talk about it over and over on his son’s wedding night.

Peter was also there for me when I also went haywire over girls. He would deliver my flowers for this girl cheyenne when he was in college in manila, then years later I would date this girl mezzy together with him and his wife, even up to this day he would listen to me over beer about what Im going through with this girl Im dating in manila, ask him he knows it all.

We don’t share the same music, that’s why we hardly share our cd’s since he’d always laugh at me listening to jazz. We love to drink, I am the chronic alcoholic and peter is stronger alcoholic, he can finish a bottle of whiskey and still drive me home, in fact he's the strongest alcohol drinker Ive ever met. Now that he’s married, his wife wants both of us to drink at their house, what peter did was had this little yard outside his window paved where we could get wasted over alcohol. The place is pretty small about 2 meters in width and it leads out to his garage and that was where we used to keep little chicks when we were 10, we’d save our pennies and buy sick chicks at the poultry at a bargain and try our luck if they survive, well some did. Good old memories.

Well we still are enjoying our beer there except that his wife can now hear our conversations from the window.

Home Brew

I flew back to manila from xiamen last saturday night. My father was in manila too, he fetched me at the airport but I took a room for myself in this hotel in malate district and the place costed more than a grand but it was small and long and the damn room felt like a bank vault. I was full from the airplane food I had on my flight so I went out to take a walk and have some beers, it was way past ten anyway.

I flew back home first thing the next day, my father had to stay for a couple more days so I flew back home without him. And I reached home only to find out that my sister’s dog gave birth to a litter of four the night before, and that’s four more of her animals that will be running around in our house soon, though she said she’ll give one puppy each to two of our grandmothers.

I had some more beers over live music later that night, maybe I’m just too homesick with the beer back home. I did pack one can of our local beer inside my luggage before flying to china weeks earlier, I know one can wasn’t even enough to last me an hour, but if i packed a six pack it might take up too much space and hell chances are, one can might burst inside my luggage and I would smell like beer for the rest of my stay in china, one can was just in case I would miss the taste of the beer here. Anyway it was in shanghai when I was about to board this local flight when the xray officer saw that one beer can in my bag and he asked me to take it out. For a minute I thought I was going to get cuffed or something for bringing a beer but he just said they can’t allow liquor on board and next thing he did, he popped open my beer gave it to me and told me to finish it up, like he thinks he's some airport bartender. Passengers were staring at me drinking while we made our way to the tarmac, but hell they continued to serve beer when I got on board the plane.

The guy after me in that xray machine was caught with three bottles of white wine in his luggage, he probably threw a party with the rest of the passengers there just to finish those three bottles.