Profiles (I)

Vincent

He is always happy when I see him.

Today, he is slightly sweaty because he has just finished bringing his Indian friend around Manila. The friend sits at the far end of the room, talking to my office mate. He keeps looking in our direction, wanting to leave, because more than an hour has passed since they had come here. They have other places they need to be.

Oblivious, Vincent and I keep talking. We have not seen each other in weeks. He is more centered now, though gravity has also set in: he tells me about a girl who leaves him hot and cold, and how he is beginning to lose interest. He comforts me when I tell him that I'd been very recently betrayed by someone I thought I could trust. He takes off his glasses, wipes the lens on his sleeve, to emphasize a point. It is rare that we are like this, serious and reflective, when usually we make each other laugh so much that our stomachs start to hurt and my asthma kicks in, which then worries Vincent, because he is a doctor-in-training and he cares about the health of his friends.

When he goes to leave, he tells me to be strong.

It shall pass. Things that don't matter always do.

Bong

Something is glowing between his fingers. It is a lit stick. Its fumes are wreathing around us, wrapping us in sweet-smelling clouds of gray.

He and his filmmaker friends (both of whom have long, straggly hair, and are clearly strangers to soap and showers) are smoking outside his shop and we are talking about the power of photographs. Bong's eyes start to glaze over. It is potent stuff - though I am standing a full foot away from them, I too am beginning to feel the haze.

He enters his shop and pulls an astronaut's helmet over his head. I go to join him. From behind the helmet, his voice muffled, he proceeds to tell me a story about a car he'd seen turn over along Ortigas.

"I got out of the car I was in. The guy (who had the accident) was shocked. At first, he couldn't move. I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures. As the guy was crawling out of the car, I kept snapping. He didn't notice me. I didn't help him. When he was already able to stand, that's when he saw me. I took a photo of him looking through me, standing over me. By that time, people had already come, people who were ready to help. I jumped back in my friend's car, then we drove away."

Sarah

She has long, dark hair that reaches down to her tight derriere. When Sarah crouches to snap a photograph of the artist, her mane swirls all over the floor, smothering the white tiles in her black curls.

She tells the artist that she might fall in love with him if he hung around her any longer. The artist, much older than the girl and her superior in the office besides, is tempted to say the same, but he resists.

Sarah is seventeen and she is dangerous territory.

Before he leaves, he hugs Sarah, as an elder brother would his younger sister.

I'm too old for you, he tells her, at hindi tayo bagay.

Don’t you worry, she says, laughing, leaning into him before he can back away.

I'll grow up soon.