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Somewhere Ogre The Rainbow

January 14th, 2006 by epoyz

something caught me off guard yesterday. as you all know, i am voluntarily bald. used to shave my own dome, but decided a weekly or bi-weekly visit to the barber shop would be much less of a hassle. plus there i can have my neck cracked, which i can never do the way them barbers can do it for me. you know those tense moments after the haircut when he’s powdered you up, dusting off the cut hair from your shoulders and neck? then you brace yourself for something that you know is coming and you say to yourself ‘ok now, you got to relax, you got to relax, easy..easy..here it comes..’ and then “chop-chop left side, chop-chop right side, rub the back, rub the back and CRrrrick to the left, CRrrrack to the right.” al-righty. i don’t know, after that i just feel–renewed? lighter? more cagey? i don’t know, but i love it when they do that.

so.

it was early afternoon when i stepped up inside the barber’s shop. it was just after lunch and they were all loungin’, chillin’ and shit. i noticed this woman on the chair next to the chief barber and recognized that it was his wifey. oh yeah, i remember, lady used to run the small beauty shop right next door, but a lot of bigger, more posh beauty shops have been sprouting around my neighborhood the past two years so i figured maybe she decided she can’t compete with these corporate giants and closed shop. (kinda like meg ryan in You’ve Got Mail, huh?) now, usually whenever i come up to the barber’s, i get pointed to the next available chair. i have been through the rotation, and all these guys are good. used to have just the one guy attend to me everytime, but i don’t feel right when a barber is dusting off his chair for me and i say “hinihintay ko si– so and so..” and i feel some hurt in the undercurrent like he’s saying “magaling pa ko sa tukmol na yan, e..” but hey, i got to stick with my dog, right? but that was long ago, my hair guy is working some place else and now i just turn the wheel and plop my ass right where they want me to. but now here’s the kicker. they pointed me to a new chair and i had a sinking feeling who i’m gonna see behind me. yup, beauty shop lady is going to be my barber.

now, let me just say right off that i have nothing against her and i understand she has to work and all to keep things runnin’. but his husband owns the place, their stable of barbers is one of the best around and i just feel she don’t need to do this shit no more. and certainly not on my time. i mean, damn. i was hyped for my haircut, dammit. and i’m looking forward to my rub-rub and neck crack, i have a basketball game later. i need to feel lighter, more agile, cagey, lithe and ready to strike. but oh no. i got the most awkward session in a barbershop ever. i certainly can’t refuse her service now. she’s the wife of the chief, for pete’s sake.

from the start the whole thing just went awry. i can’t look at her, i was all tense and i know i can’t exchange some friendly manly banter with this lady. i was afraid if i say something naughty or if i cuss or something (the way men sometimes talk, laging may mura sa una at sa huli ng sentence like “put**ginang caguioa yan kagabi eh ang galing talaga ng hayup ng anak ng pu*a, eh…), she’d smack me right in my mouth like my grandma used to. so she asked me what cut although it’s obvious. “zero?” and meekly i replied “opo..”.

oh, come on.

this is the first time in years a barber’s asked me that. usually from the get-go them boys know how i run my fly shit. occasionally they’d just comment as i get comfy on the chair like “gusto mo talaga na magaang ka, ano?” or “okey yan, tipid sa suklay” or “lagyan natin ng gel pagkatapos?”. shit, now all of that is down the freakin’ drain.

plus, again i mean no offense here, but there’s something about the way a man is with a pair of scissors and in my case, the clipper. not too light, not too heavy. when the clipper passes an area, i know that area of the dome is clean, yo. no going back and forth and shit. a barber presses that fucker on your head and it’s like a buzzsaw cutting through wood going “zzzzzzrrrraaeengh” and it’s clean. i hate to say this but obviously lady barber didn’t do this kind of shit often in her beauty shop. she was running that clipper on my head like it was a scrubbing pad or something. and because i was ill at ease i was beginning to perspire, the sweat in my head just making matters worse, further impeding the scrubbing process. oh dear Lord, make her stop. i was getting disheartened by each passing second. i sense my feel-good weekly appointment with the barber slowly wasting away. aside from that now i’m sure i won’t have my neck cracked and shit. lady can barely reach on top of my head that i have to slide low into my chair for her. aw, gosh-darn-it.

after 25 excruciating-like-in-a-dentist’s-chair minutes it’s over. usually it takes only 7 minutes right from the moment i sit on the chair to the time i bounce out the joint (cagey and lithe, remember?), but all the going back and forth shit on my head left me, um, i don’t know, despirited and heavy? i gave her the payment and i wasn’t even able to walk out of there, more like i shuffled out or slithered. i gave the chief barber one glance and dude can’t even meet my eye. there was an awkward silence all around because being it early in the afternoon there was no other customer in there but me, and i’m telling you, you can cut the tension in there with a butter knife. the other barbers were as meek as the husband, and i caught someone smirking as lady put my money in her drawer. i squinted my eyes and knew something was up.

oh-ho-ho, now i get it.

husband and wifey probably argued about this arrangement last night and guess who won? it probably went “no, i can’t let you do your shit there, it just ain’t right. it will be so embarassing..” but she went back with ” well i need to be cutting something off, motherfucker, i need to work and i’m bored out of my mind, you have any other ideas? why are you covering your balls, then? are you gonna let me do my shit there tomorrow? good.” and that was the end of it. chief can’t even look me in the eye, dog. damn, chief. you whipped-ass poor bird. i just shook my head imperceptibly as i slithered away. then i breathed deeply and let out a long breath, like when you want a person to know that you’re disappointed in him but you don’t say it directly. i’m sure dude got my message. i was already out the street and i still wanted to get back in there and yell “ANDRES!!!” and run like hell.

i hope you girls don’t get mad at me. i’m just sayin’. hey, i know that most of my female friends prefer gay hairstylists over girls. and i think it’s no accident either that the most prominent hair people in the world are men (insert three snaps in a Z formation here..). there’s just something there, i’m guessin’. i don’t know what it is, i’m an ig’nant fool. but it’s there. look, back in the 80s and the early 90s the best beauty shop in san pedro was this place aptly named “The Perfect Touch of Ting Escalante”, which was later changed to “The Perfect Touch of The Gays” after the Great Gay Mutiny of ‘89, where Ting’s other up-and-coming swarditas got a huge following and challenged for partnership. O ha? a close second was the pioneering ancient but equally prominent hairstyling diva “Rolly De Manila”. damn, those were the days. sadly, only Rolly De Manila survived the San Pedro Parlor Wars. reportedly the girls within Ting’s stable engaged in a civil war kasi sila-sila nagpalit-palitan at nagnakawan ng mga joypren at papah. halos magsaksakan ng gunting ang mga bruha, and their talents which were strong collectively now lay scattered throughout the Gaylaxy. Rolly, now 107 years old (i’m not really sure but he sure looks like it) had the last laugh, while Ting, to this day, is left with trying to pick up the pieces and scraping a living doing wedding day appointments.

damn. i hope when i go back to the barber’s next week chief’s wifey is gone. or else i may need to find a new place. maybe i can try to scope the place first and time my arrival when she’s doing another unsuspecting dude.

lately i’ve been reading a lot of things that this guy wrote. being tired of writing about what i see around me and losing hope for our country but still trying to keep that hope alive, a lot of what mr. de quiros says just enforces what’s already flickering with the tiniest of embers inside my dark mind. i see the country through him with all the intelligence that i don’t possess, a view of an older man who’s seen a lot but still is not tired enough to stop trying, despite the apathy and cynicism that has sprouted around him. i agree with most of what he writes about because apart from being at a loss for things to say i’m just impressed by his resilience and guile and his unwavering love for the country just froths on top of all the steaming pile of shit that has been served to him. i’ve yet to come across a column installment he wrote that i totally don’t agree with (but then again i can’t claim to understand everything that swings my way, i may just be an ‘agree-er’..). when raul roco died i made a draft for a blog posting giving props to the man and what he stood for, but somehow i failed to finish and post it because i can’t do his life’s work any justice in this blog.

puro kasi kalokohan ang alam isulat, e.

guess what? mr. de quiros wrote what i can’t get out of my murky mind, about mr. roco and then some. and we totally agree about jovy salonga. in fact, before i got to the sentence comparing sir raul to sir jovy, i was telling my brother how like sen. roco, mr. salonga was the best president we never had. and there it was, right in his column, just when i was about to read about it.

i also loved his ogre story, and some more of his sentiments that i share here.

hey, sure beats reading a whole bunch of incoherent stuff from me, right?

because if i’m gonna write about my sentiments, after much runaround and gook and stuff, you’ll only get this:

there is so much conflict in the world, there’s no use in adding more to it.

or to put it bluntly: andami nang kupal sa mundo, sasama ka pa ba?

kaya naman nagkukwento na lang ako.

they should re-release this song. not do a revival, like all these damn kids butchering eraserheads songs, but just play it on the radio again. more apt now than when it was originally written and performed by Yano. and hey, People Power is going to be 20 next month. what the fuck happened to what my parents fought for in EDSA ‘86? shi-i-it.

“Kumusta na, ayos pa ba
Ang buhay natin, kaya pa ba?
Eh kung hinde, paano na?
Ewan ko ba, bahala na?

Napanood kita sa tibi, sumama ka sa rali
Kasama ang mga madre, pinigilan mga tangke
Umiiyak ka pa sa harap ng mga sundalo
Namigay ka pa ng rosas na nabili mo sa kanto. (chorus)

Dala-dala mo pa, estatwa ni Sto. Nino
Eskapularyo’t Bibliya, sangkatutak na rosaryo
At sa gitna ng EDSA, lumuhod ka’t nagdasal pa
Our Pader, Hail Mary from thy bounty thru Christ our Lord amen. (chorus)

Pebrero, bente-sais nang si Apo ay umalis
Ngiti mo’y hanggang tenga sa kakatalon, napunit pa’ng pantalon mo
Pero hindi bale, sabi mo, marami naman kame
Kahit na amoy pawis, tuloy pa rin ang disko sa kalye. (chorus)

Nakita kita kahapon, may hila-hilang kariton
Huminto sa may Robinson, tumanga buong maghapon
Sikat ka noon sa tibi kase kasama ka doon sa rali
Pero ngayo’y nag-iisa, naglalakad sa may EDSA.

Kumusta na, ayos pa ba
Ang buhay natin, kaya pa ba?
Eh kung hinde, paano na?
Ewan ko ba, bahala na?
Ewan mo ba, bahala na
Bahala na, bahala na?”

-”Kumusta Na”, Yano

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One Response to ' Somewhere Ogre The Rainbow '

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  1.   Rhesa said,

    on January 24th, 2006 at 11:28 am

    So intense! Glad you got out of the Barber shop unscath… Good luck finding a new one or at least avoiding her.

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