PLATE CLEARER
There is a big party near a poolside (or is it a beach place?) and I am clearing out all these plates of food. There is just too much trash. I cannot handle everything!! I know that there was some girl who was coming on to me, but nothing is clear except the volume of plates that remain to be cleared.

January 8, 1997

GENDER TALK AND THE PISSING SINK
There is a focus group discussion seated at a long, wooden table--- gothic in its length of polished mahogany. There are many friends at the discussion, including Rina T. and Monette V. We have just finished the all-Indian food dinner (including the dessert which is Almond Lychees) and are well into the topic of the evening which is: "Why are men such openly sex-starved maniacs?"
___I go to the bathroom to pee only to discover that I am in the scary bathroom under the stairs (from my Lola's house in Bulusan Street)--- and to make matters worse, I am pissing into a solid square sink which does not have a pipe underneath it... so all the urine is dripping beneath the sink onto the floor in a messy spill. I only find out later that there is a toilet bowl nearby.

January 9, 1997

THE BOAT
Riding on a bangka going to a sailboat that's actually already half-filled with water, and sinking fast. I remember my mother complaining that we might drown and I said, "No, it's just a matter of balancing the boat." In order to fix the sailboat we were approaching, I brought out the HATCHET.

THE HATCHET ASSEMBLY
It was wrapped in a brown paper bag. I took it out and it was two halves of a pair of metal shears. NOT A HATCHET. Nonetheless, I tried to assemble it using the instructions on the difficult manual, while trying to figure out where the dozens of screws fit!

THE PHOTO ALBUM
From looking at instructions to going thru Gino Torres' photo journal about his travels to Croatia/Czechoslovakia and meeting Filipino immigrants there... (there are also some weird native American pics in there, but I try not to notice them). Anyway, I chance upon some news clippings in the photo album about a 9 year old girl who worked as a child prostitute and was fingered to death while in a straitjacket. The body was left half uncovered by a white sheet, "to tease the eyes with the hidden."

THE GHOSTING
Turns out the guy who murdered the kid by fingering was my old high school friend, John Alikpala. I was with John and our band's former drummer Ralph Diaz. We were helping John prepare for his thesis defense (concerning what?). We left John's house past midnight to get to school really early after an allnight thesis defense practice. (Not that I really cared how the defense went, knowing John's guilty murderous secret). On the way out, John brought along this ancient Chinese kitchen god (a religious icon) which was symbolic of his deceased grandfather.
___ In the car of Ralph: we pass by Ralph's house so he can pick up some clothes. John and I are left in the car. Suddenly, the car's hood warps into impossible shapes and a mongolian kid appears outside the window. It is John's grandfather...haunting John for justice regarding the murdered 9 year old. John advises me to speak to it in an imaginary language (as he and his grandpa used to do years back, inventing their own babble). It doesn't work. So I sing Happy Birthday and the ghost (now a woman)... responds positively.

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