And then something fell. Oh we didn�t notice it. The change was so slow, so imperceptible we hardly felt it. People just suddenly stopped clasping hands. I walked into the office one morning and realized that all the women were in the family way. At lunch break I sensed that conversations were going heavy on infant formulas, wonder kids and househelps not being helpful enough. The hamletting happened in the heart. Tiannanmen wouldn�t forgive; the Sandinistas won�t get back; Berlin will have a hard time rising from the rubble; and in an upland village in Davao del Sur, there would be no forgetting the massacre that took place inside a chapel. The cracks gave way and soon life simply splintered into mangled flesh and unrecognizable bits. We kept on doing what little work was there to do, but something irretrievable slipped out of our hands.
Still, we insisted that it wasn�t over yet. We even believed we were entering a new phase. In the littleness of our lives we harbored hopes, looked for new anchors. We talked about owning up to new realities, new imperatives, adopting new efficiencies, professionalizing. Salaries were standardized and we rethought our rubber shoes, filling out DTRs and SSS forms. And for God�s sake, dress up! I remember this office mate who did not want another baby and had a miscarriage, and she had to fight for her health benefits alone. Well, SSS is an anomaly. You have a daughter outside of marriage, or a sister uninterested with motherhood but was not allowed to have an abortion-Why should I raise that son of a pig all by myself? It�s so unfair!--and you thought you were the ones who needed social security most, and you ended up being laughed out of the system. Where�s your marriage contract? Where�s your husband? Huh? Okay. Then show us your adoption papers, at least. Fuck social security, and fuck family.
We began partying, taste the good life, wine, dine. But fatigued as we were, we kept on with our work, going to banana plantations, interviewing farmers and workers, pushing for land reform, talking nationalist industrialization, reconsidering hydro-power, going gender. Papers piled high that at times it felt like we had transformed into termites boring through the stacks. An event happened if one of the staff came to work early and find some swine masturbating in the hallway. Or if someone did overtime and slept at the office and one of the guys walked in at seven before washed underwear could be taken down from behind the refrigerator. The ensuing ruckus would be carried all the way to Sage�s Pizza, after several bottles of beer, one side insisting it was disgusting and totally unacceptable: it showed lack of prudence, personal integrity, and so on--My God, Sheilfa, don�t you have a modicum of decency? at large pa?!?-- the other side screaming at the top of her voice it had nothing to do with sex! just physics!- What would you have me do, wrap it bloody unwashed inside my bag? Pervert! why can�t you sleep over one panty being hung to dry!? And when I stood up from my chair and bald-headed Fatso who did not even know how business letters were folded saw fresh stains of blood on the butt of my pants, he rubbed his thumb against his chin and nodded.
Damak, he said.
Oh it was all very gay. Melot B. our terrific horrific Executive Director was relentless, never letting pass an opportunity that would make us happier than we already were. He invited Raffy B. one afternoon to speak on the state of the nation- I can�t remember what he said now- and how we crammed ourselves in the conference room to listen. Maybe I was comparing him to the state of the revolution so that my heart went up to him, but he really did look like he just got bludgeoned in the head several times over and was clinging on to what was crumbling in his hands. Or maybe it was all in my imagination. When all about you is falling, you tend to hold on to a memory. You invent a hero, something strong, something beautiful to make you feel there is still hope in the world. On his way to the Executive Director�s Office I harangued Raffy. Hey. Where is Alan J? Give me a favor, will you? To please tell him I thank him for abandoning his bourgeois marriage and going over to the proletarian revolution. But where is he now, Raffy? Did he survive the purge? Will anyone outlive the blood in our hands the ugliness? Melot B. waltzed in, fearing for your life, like you were the only one in danger of getting waylaid. I went back to my mug of coffee and the tome of paper on my desk and thought, Damn. Peasant uprisings came and went, but I still don�t know how to compute rate of exploitation. How am I to determine Mindanao�s mode of production so necessary in discussing strategy of struggle then? And how am I to hold my head up in conversation with you and Alan J. at least for as long as my mug of coffee lasts? As Jim said, my neurons are as tangled as my hair. He proposed I comb more regularly, maybe the knots would loosen, mats smooth out, and political economy would not be such a hard nut to crack I made it out to be. I�m not saying don�t think me intelligent, Raffy. Because I am. But I am female and you could have been my Political Officer. You know how highly the POs� intelligence was held then in our helplessly hierarchical organization espousing egalitarianism. He once told me I am a little wrong in the head, always off-tangent, always going out of the line I�ll never make a good soldier. He also said if I can not agree with what he says and abide with what has been decided on according to the principle of democratic centralism, I am free to leave the cavalry. I never passed, Raffy. But how am I to tell him that now that I got there I could never leave?
Oh John. Do you remember? Do you remember that time you came around with a duffel of books telling me about some Food Security study you were doing and asking me where I left my daughter? You went to Agdao. You visited the masa there and left the slum feeling molested, depressed. How you tried to drink with the men, feel things their way. They joked over gin, their foul mouths blubbering with ignorance, trying to mate you with one of their daughters. You were pissed off. You came back to the Philippines to talk Food and Sovereignty, rally against the notion that the Cold War has thawed we should not be deceived, and all the beloved Agdao masa could think of was sex: their daughter�s ready meat and the White market. I sympathized with you then. I knew you understood, I knew you cared, felt, felt so much more than what our brightest smartest male revolutionaries here could be capable of feeling thinking conceiving, but I was as angry as you were, John. What I was really thinking was, So gutter-bred Filipino sexism can hurt American intelligentsia, too?
I give you credit for my feminist education, John. A man could never be a feminist and you aren�t one who would usurp our sorrow and call yourself a feminist just because nowadays it�s sexy and remunerative to be gender-sensitive, but you ought to know that I owe it all to the books you sent me that I got this far in my politics. That day you scoffed at the drunkards of Agdao for teasing insulting you about taking home with you a Filipino wife? I knew that those beasts were the same people who rape me, club me, laugh at me, make mincemeat of me every wrathful day, damn be class allegiance, but I had sworn then, John, I�ll never suffer a racist pig either.
I have kept my promise till now, John. And Douglas my gay friend says that�s how I got myself in deep hogshit. I�m not sorry, John.
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