PJ met Avie

When I was in sixth grade, a girl named Avie sat

one seat up, one row over from me in English class.

I don’t exactly remember how she, I, her sister, and

another girlfriend of theirs first began meeting in

the auditorium after school. We’d dump onto the stage

a scatter of books and binders, then get up there

ourselves. Avie would strum a guitar, and all three

girls would sing folk songs and RnB music by the

likes of Nexxus, Eagle and Parokya.

When it was my turn to do something, my own

speciality was for pratfalls. I’d spent a lot of time

watching television comedians such as Rene Requiestas,

Dolphy, and Babalu, and I could improvise

any number of daffy skits–all of which, at some

point, involved an inglorious tumble which would land

me abruptly on my bum or flat on my face.

We’d be there up on the stage for thirty minutes,

maybe forty-five, our play carried along by a great

undertow of attraction, very present, but certainly

then unfathomable to me. Afterwards, my books and

volleyball bouncing around in the wire basket on the

handlebars of my bike, I’d pedal lickety-split home

and bustle to walk in the door as if none of it at all

had happened, and I was late only because I’d done the

“normal” thing of stopping off at the city park for a

quick game of barangayan volleyball.

Almost immediately at that time in my life, the most looked-for part of my school day was after school,

getting up there on stage with Avie and the others,

and I seemed to be able to find endless funny ways to

fall.

Now I already knew Avie was a very clever girl. For

example, weeks earlier she’d come to school wearing a

self-made necklace on which dangled the lacquered

innards of the bull frog she’d dissected the day

before in our Biology class.

One day, Avie handed me in class a slip of

paper–about the size of a fortune cookie

“fortune”–on which was written in soft pencil the

phrase “PJ met Avie”.

This WAS a puzzle to me, although I COULD decode what

was very likely intended to be her signature in the

very corner of the slip: an illustration of a volleyball and some

pompoms.

I read the phrase, then I re-read it many, many

times. I can’t recall whether the day I got the note

we met after school up on the auditorium stage.

Nevertheless, as soon as I got the note home, I held

it in front of a mirror, hoping to understand what it

meant. I turned the note upside down. I re-arranged

all the letters in all the words. In short, I did

everything I could think of to make it make any sense

at all. Yet days later, I still hadn’t figured out

what Avie was trying to tell me.

“How could I possibly be so unclever and

thick-headed!” I chastised myself.

I put the note in my cufflink box, and pushed that to

the very back of my top dresser drawer. The following

day I abruptly stopped going to the auditorium

immediately after school. Morever, I stopped passing

the vicinity of Avie’s hall locker between classes

when I knew she’d be there, I stopped trying to catch

her eye during class, I even stopped looking in her

direction at all–although I certainly wished I was

doing otherwise.

Meanwhile, “life”, of course, went on. For me,

“life” was pretty much school, home, and volleyball at

the court.

As for Avie, at some point I heard she was going out

with a freshman from the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila.

Months and months later, I was handed a slip of paper

by a classmate, another classmate. That slip of

paper, too, was about the size of a fortune cookie

“fortune”, and was signed in the very corner with a familiar-looking-illustration volleyball and some

pompoms.. On it,

written in the inimitable handwriting of Avie

was the following message–

PJ met Avie,

Made a hit.

PJ wouldn’t shave,

PJ and Avie split!

Papa Cologne

I had seen Papa Cologne ads posted at

intervals along EDSA on any of several long

distance car trips with my parents. But I didn’t

need to have seen even a single one.

Apparently, I’d had my chance with Avie–to do

something or make something or show something MORE to

her. All I’d done, though–all I’d dared to do, hence

her cryptic encouragement, was to footle around taking

pratfalls–then inexplicably avoid her completely.

The VERY instant I read that second note, I knew.

And so much about me then seemed so silly.