Flirt

He would be lying if he told you he does not flirt. He has quite an excuse for it. He thinks he is a writer. And what a writer does, in a way of putting it, is flirt with his readers.

Forget about the dictionary meaning. Flirting is bringing an engagement by way of conversation to a high level of risk without falling over the edge. The edge is oftentimes indeterminate, often defined only in hindsight as when the flirter and the flirted upon take it just a bit too far. The edge can be arbitrary, as when one applies an ethical principle to the act. For himself, he maintains a particular standard through the whole act. It is a standard he learned somewhat indirectly from his late father: Always be a perfect gentleman.

Flirting can hurt. It can hurt the flirter as much as it can hurt the one flirted upon. But perhaps that is the whole point of it. There is no good exchange between humans, no good and interesting conversation with no effect on the future and no risks.  And artists and writers are some of the most competent flirts around. It is their calling, their business. It is essential to their craft.

As it is with everyone else, including his late father who lived most of his life in Dumanjug, Cebu, which municipality is even this day celebrating its town fiesta. So in a way of giving this fiesta honor by remembrance, he takes himself back to some vague memory from his past.

He was only a young man in his teens when his father died. And there was, of course, the wake. And it might have been that his father was a bit of a flirt that he had many categories of friends.

They filled the house each night of the wake: relatives, direct and extended, and then his father’s  old friends from Dumanjug. For while his family was resettled in the city, their visits to the old hometown never ceased. What they had in the city was simply a place to stay at night while they worked or studied. At every opportunity they always repaired back to the province to be with friends and family, almost as if to continue their lives there. It seemed almost as if they never really left the place.

There was, in this town, a store and restaurant. It was for all intents and purposes the town bar. And there was a woman who operated this bar, a nice pleasant-looking lady in those years when his parents were still quite young. And, of course, what transpired in this town-bar was never openly discussed in the company of children, which only gave it its dark mystery.

The lady bartender, if she was that, was an important presence in the town. She existed in the sense of myth and legend among the women of the town. It was not as if they looked down on her.

She was simply suspect. Quite as suspect as the behavior of husbands who went from time to time  to this place to spend their evenings eating, drinking and otherwise having fun. In what particular manner of having fun was not quite clear. Surely, it could not have been as bad as some of the wives imagined.  But they would never know for sure. No proper woman ever went into this place at night.

But when his father lay in state at their house in the city, this woman came to pay her respects. And she looked genuinely sad, as it should have been since she was one of his father’s oldest friends.

And his mother’s as well. And yet as soon as he saw her, the young child immediately recalled one night many years before when his mother asked him to help her fetch his father from the town bar. It seemed he had gotten so drunk he passed out and nobody knew quite what to do except to inform the immediate next of kin; quite surely, the wife.

When they got there, he found his mother would not enter the place. He had to go in alone. And sure enough his father was quite drunk and incoherently babbling away. Yet the father stood up upon his prodding, and leaning on his little son’s shoulders slowly wobbled to where the mother stood waiting in the street.

All three walked silently home. The irate mother never saying a word as the drunken father mumbled an indecipherable litany. One would think this occurrence would have scarred the young boy.

And yet in all his life he never quite seemed as close and as honest with his parents as on this particular night. He would not feel quite as needed and loved. Never again would this experience be repeated between them.

And yet, at his father’s wake, this woman went up to his mother to speak. And only then would the boy see how both women, were truly friends. As they stood in front of the father’s casket, the woman said to his wife in a firm voice: “He was always a perfect gentleman.”

Only years thereafter would he know somewhat exactly what she meant to say.

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