They say youth is wasted on the young but perhaps the old are just too practical.  Who can say, really?  What with dear Life being such a degenerate prankster and all.  You'd have to put up with the way she mocks your mortal frailties before you can see the secret joys of her trivial blessings.  Only the young and carefree seem privy to her humor.  Maybe because the innocents still have their invincible imaginations while the learned cynics only sulk at their prosaic preoccupations.  Forgive me if my logic is a bit muddled; I am new at being old.     

My abrupt coming of age began in a January dawn.  The cold nights of December petulantly lingered while the searing days of the incoming summer struggled to have their presence felt. A somber calm pervaded our little side street in Pelaez despite the muted din of people doing their morning rituals. Wild city birds and domestic game cocks were singing their sad songs in the distance.  It was a gloomy Monday, after the frolic and frenzy of the Sinulog festival.

I had been awake for a while, just staring at the ceiling, chasing a half-remembered dream.  I should have gone back to sleep but I was thirsty.  My mouth was dry.  I could taste the bitter trace of stale beer and cigarettes and good times ending.  Sinulog was over, the party was finished and I was really thirsty.   

I had to get up but I didn't have to go to school that day and wouldn't have to soon.  I'll get my psychology degree in March, and would join the throngs of people hunting for jobs.  It was not a prospect I was looking forward to, not as much as a glass of ice cold water.  I trudged my way down our wooden staircase, my head feeling like the wobbly hand guard which can barely support my full weight.   

I could hear my mother and father talking in our little kitchen-cum-dining room.  Even before I could see them, I already knew what I would find.  My father would be sitting erect in an uncomfortable straight-backed narra chair.  Sturdier than our staircase – my father and our chairs.  He'd be spewing jokes while my mother would be laughing and frying half cooked sunny side ups.  They were a perfect pair, happy and faithful to each other, comfortable with their compatible idiosyncrasies.

I must have interrupted their frivolity because they both stopped laughing when I opened our refrigerator.  I chose the coldest pitcher, opened the lid and drank straight from it.  As I was leaning into the ref to return the half-empty pitcher, I could feel my usually genial forebears staring holes into the back of my head.

"What?"  I had to ask.  My father just shook his head and they both cracked into the same smile.  The smile that says 'we don't understand you but we love you just the same.'  What was I to do except smile back and retreat upstairs to our little terrace?

Our house had a terrace too small it wasn't even big enough for a mahjong table.  I'm not complaining.  Having a terrace, no matter how small, can be considered a blessing when you live in a toilet.  My father inherited the toilet from my grandfather.  You see, my father was not only sturdy but also the most generous among his siblings.  The land where our house stands is a parcel of a bigger area where our ancestral home once stood. 

A huge fire in the 70's burned down the old house and my grandfather decided not to rebuild but to apportion the lot to his children instead.  My aunt got the living room area, my uncle got the kitchen and my father got the toilet.  The 70's was a golden age for Cebuano architecture when bamboos ran out of style and concrete and plywood became in vogue.  Thus, we lived in a small house with plywood rooms, plywood cabinets and concrete floors and a tacky little terrace. 

Our terrace was cursed with an eternal layer of dust rising from the wake of vehicles and pedestrians.  The trick was to look for the most recently occupied spot so that you could sit on the least dusty surface.  That is, of course, if you were too lazy to get a rug.  But why would I want to get a rug under the circumstances?  The point being that I wanted to sit down because I felt like lazing.

There was a scarred green ottoman at the corner, the only survivor of a five-piece set that once graced our living room.  He may not look much but he is a legend when it comes to having one of the cleanest surfaces in our terrace.  He has frayed edges, watermarks in his wooden legs, a tear or two in his upholstery and a deep round depression in the middle of his worn down cushion.  My lonely and depressed ottoman was haggard from a lifetime of carrying the weight of lazy asses.

I wondered what he must think of me; what with the lazy ass he has been carrying this last couple of years belonging to me exclusively.  I lit a cigarette to help me ponder, my first stick of the day.  He must think I'm just another insensitive, stinky, sweaty asshole in the long line of assholes he has been intimate with in his entire ass-kissing life.  But then again perhaps I give him purpose; my ass is the reason for his existence.  Maybe he is thankful and contented.

Nevertheless, I opted not to sit on my moss green ottoman with the chronic depression.  Instead, I sat on the ledge of our terrace, took one long drag at my cigarette and luxuriously exhaled.  I felt like I was in heaven inhaling the sweet and pungent fumes of hell, sweeter still because it is forbidden.  I had been trying to quit since the very first stick I ever smoked.  Why can't I, anyway?  I was thinking along those lines when all hell broke loose.

"Get a haircut!"  This is coming from my imperturbable mother. 

She's always bugging me about my haircut.  It's a constant battle we engage in.  I always try to be clever with reasons that could have felled down the Marcos regime if it were ever decided on a debate.  She always has a ready question to all my answers.  She always wins by default.  I don't know why I even bother, except that I know deep down in my heart of hearts that I do manage to annoy her even if she never shows it.  That, for me, was reason enough.

"I don't want to look like any of those kids with engineered hairs.  They all look so clean and contrived.  Every time I see one of them, I get the feeling that their personal barber is constantly shadowing them with scissors and clippers at hand, ready to pounce on that one stupid strand of hair which dares veer away from the upside down hedge he has meticulously constructed.  I don't want a barber lurking in my head; you've occupied most of the limited space already."

"Why wouldn't you want to look clean and contrived?"  She wins again.

Content that I have ruffled her feathers quite a bit, I felt a parting shot would not be necessary.  I stood up from my precarious perch in our little terrace and ostentatiously ran my fingers through my hair.  I have long and graceful fingers but they are not that thin, and my hair could barely even stand out between them.  For the life of me, I could not imagine why I already need a haircut.  But Ma is Ma and there is no arguing with her.  If she says so, I would get a haircut even if I was already shaved clean and the barber would have to dig into my scalp to extract every root. 

I was thinking about having my head shaved while I was sauntering down the stairs.  By the time I reached the landing, I have decided against the idea.  I'm sure Ma wouldn't like it.  It wouldn't be the clean and contrived look she wanted for the moment and there's not much remedy to a botched shave except perhaps a wig.  And I don't want her to even begin thinking along those lines.  I quickly dashed out the door before she could ever hear snippets of my thoughts.

I was about to open our gate when I remembered I was still dressed in the clothes I slept on.  I had to go back in and change.  I started tiptoeing back into the house and quickly realized the absurdity of what I was doing.  Why was I sneaking into my own house?  Was my conscience so confused as to loose its perspective entirely?  Did I do something unspeakable last night?

All I could remember was that there were six of us who went out together to join the thousands of revelers in the grand Mardi gras parade; four girls and two guys.  When the official street dancing was over and all the floats with their gigantic commercial logos and puny Santo Niño icons had passed, we went to a bar.  It was mutually agreed between us that we shall, to the best of our ability, extend the revelry as long as we could, providing of course, that the said revelry would include beer.

I would want to describe the atmosphere of the bar we went to as sublime.  The avant garde décor and the beautiful patrons swayed in their chic clothes and daintily carried their fashionable drinks.  Blue lamps, green strobes and multi-colored lasers pierced the languid haze of Capri's and Davidoff's, and Bose and Denon speakers blared mesmerizing rhythms of hip hop and trance.

But the truth was that the bar was pretentious and utterly without character.  The people looked strained; maybe I could judge them so effortlessly because we were all the same.  It was still sexy in a pathetic kind of way, like a sullen corner of hell where the once earthly people congregate to unwind for all eternity.  The desire for excitement was still strong but the thrill of novelty already long gone.

And so we drank, secure in our comfortable circle of six.  We told tall tales of common experiences and familiar exploits.  We all knew each story before it even began but we listened just the same.  The night wore on and we all got tipsier and tipsier.  The people became more alluring; the dumb perplexity of their expressions seemed to have become a little more profound.

I'm not sure how it really came to happen.  Perhaps it was the beer or the music or maybe the moment was already predetermined by Fate in her cosmic calendar of sorts.  I was dancing with my bosom friend Dianne and we were looking deep into each other's eyes.  We've done it a million times before but the things we saw at that moment were somehow quite different.  She blushed and I'm sure I did too.  It was the first time we ever felt awkward with each other.