Two Men and Lady

It began with a request for Panga ng Tuna. In the morning, as we were on the way to the airport to send off my father to Manila, my brother muttered something about having missed eating the sweet salty flesh of a perfectly grilled panga ng tuna. Kuya Archie, my father’s gregarious yet brusko assistant butts in to tell us that he knows the perfect place to have one and promises to take us there for dinner.

So this is where we’re having the supposedly delicious tuna,I say to myself with amusement and a silent chuckle. It’s a bit dark and smoky but it does have its merits. Because it is Thursday, it’s not so busy, and the food including the tuna turned out to be pretty good and inexpensive. The place Kuya Archie brought us to was one of those places that others refer to as a beerhouse, complete with christmas lights, young not yet of legal age girls nubile in shorts and miniskirts serving drinks and three middle-aged men with guitars on a makeshift stage singing a set of Beatles and sappy romantic songs.

Now I am not one to be new to such places. One of the business managers from my former job in Pasig owned a club-cum-karaoke bar geared for men, with sexy clad women as servers-GRO. Our office clique usually went there for gimmicks because of the discounts and free pulutans we get from the manager. But this thing last night was a bit different. After sitting down, Archie catches my attention and points to a particular young lady. “Girlfriend ko yan, J.” Okay, hmmm. Then he calls her, and introduces us to her. I smile, she is pretty, but young, too young I think for any job. His hand goes to lightly tap her arm and ask her if she’s eaten. Kumain na daw. Then he points to my brother. “X, anong masabi mo sa kanya, gwapo diba.” The girl smiles uncertainly, looks at my brother, who ignores her, then says something about my brother being quiet, tahimik. I was grinning as I look at my brother for some reaction, but he prefers to act nonchalant and deaf, and busies himself with drinking his rum coke.

A few minutes and Archie makes a mock expression of pain, points at a relatively older girl, in her mid twenties, manning the till. “Ayaw lumapit nung isa, nagtatampo yata.” Oh, okay, so he has two girlfriends in the establishment. I ask him if the girls know about it. “Nakakaamoy na yung isa, nagtatampo kaya ayaw lumapit dito.” If I was in my sarcastic, bitter mode I would have told him that he should wipe that smirk off his face. Pera mo lang habol nila, no. Instead I asked him little questions about the girls, and he being a natural tattletale to tell the tales of his two syotas. The older being an ex-cultural dancer in Japan who acts as the cashier of the beer garden. I ask him who he prefers. *Evil smile*. Magaling sa buhay yung isa (the older one), may diskarte sa buhay. Bilib din ako nakapagpatayo ng bahay yan sa Panabo. Yung isa naman batang-bata pa at sobrang lambing. Naku, di mo matatawaran sa lambing. I laugh, oh yeah, I noticed. The girl comes to our table every few minutes and at one time tells Archie “Basa na yung likod mo, be.”

Okay, so I always felt that it was a badge of honot for me to easily adapt to becoming one of the boys. But listening to someone, whom I well know to have a wife and three kids in Sultan Kudarat, discuss his other love life (times two!), and watch him turn all flirty and lovey-dovey with a teenage girl was a bit too much. After a few hours of dinner, a couple of bottle of beer (for me) and rum (for the men), a few more stories of his exploits, and after learning of his plan for a night tour with my brother and me ( man, he must really think of me as a bloke!) to a few more nightspots, I opted out. May nagsasayaw dun, pero nakashorts at tube lang, yun lang ang pwede dito sa Davao ---his catch line to persuade my bro to join him on a nightcap in a place named Aquarium. Hmmm.

I asked them to drop me at home first before they go about their other bonding sessions. In truth I would have preferred to have spent the night having idle girltalk or even a quiet time surfing the net in a coffee shop. But then for the novelty at least of listening to a middle age man spew his machismo proudly, and openly show his infidelity (he kissed the teenage girl goodbye in front of us!). For his frank take on boredom and beerhouse life. --“Dito ako tumatambay pag gabi at wala kaming lakad ng daddy mo. Wala naman akong gagawin sa bahay , dito na lang, may kasamang kiss pa.“ Vulgar as it is, well, it does kind of beat the routine of Wifis and girltalks. Plus, I can now add a fresh exhibit to the fact that for some men at least, love,sex, marriage and being good are distinct, alltogether different things separated ,sometimes but not always, by distance and boredom.