april 26, 99

VISIONS OF MABINI

1:30 a.m.
A.Mabini St., Manila.
Saturday...no early Sunday morning.

A guy on his belly in the back seat of a Mercedes, his upper torso leaning out of the open door, barfing up alcohol and dinner chunks---while a girl, apparently consoling the poor guy, is rubbing his back. His heaving comes in short sharp spasms.

Dried puke on cold cement streets.

Fat Indian man on a bicycle haggling with an old wrinkly whore about exchange rates, on the sidewalk of a grillery.

Outside a bar with a live band playing R.E.M. covers, a big, burly man... crying on the shoulder of two more macho-looking malefriends. "Ang sakit ng ginawa niya sa akin, pare. Di ko na kaya...."

Long cement girders unloading at a building construction site. Traffic ensues as the trucks take over the road. Taxis blare their impatience in sharp horn blasts.

Black canal muck strewn about... left by careless garbagemen.

A couple of midgets sit on the sidewalk outside Hobbit House...exhausted from carting drinks to fuzzy-brained foreigners.

...and the jeeps keep going...

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