March 15th, 2008
A Thousand Bitter-Sweet Poems for Women
By Michael Ian Lomongo, March 21, 2001
Last March 10, I watched PETA’s “Komedi Club,” a festival of 10 to 15-minute plays written by members of the PETA Writers’ Bloc. In celebration of the International Women’s Day, the plays featured during that weekend (March 8-10) were written by women playwrights (except for Nick Pichay’s “Kahit na Magtiis”). The line-up included “Flight,” an interpretative dance choreographed and performed by Martina Gonzales-Quesada, Regina Lasam, and Verni Severo, incorporated with a poem by Inge Saltarin; an adaptation of Liza Magtoto’s Palanca-winning “Despedida de Soltera“; Sheila Crisostomo’s “Emergency” (the grand prize winner of the second Charley dela Paz Awards of the PETA-PDP Writers’ Bloc); Nick Pichay’s “Kahit na Magtiis”; and Lallie Bucoy’s “Isang Libong Tula para sa Dibdib ni Dulce.”
I liked the last two plays best.
“Kahit na Magtiis” (Directed by Phil Noble) is about a hard-up couple (Gilbert Onida and Vinia Pamplona) who dreams of striking it rich by planning on catering to the rapacious sexual appetite of a macho president.
The set, a simple scaffold that served as the room/house and playground of the couple, effectively conveyed the state of economic deprivation of the characters. It also showcased the complex physical moves of the actors. (The agility of the actors, especially Vinia, in both speech and movement was simply awesome.) More importantly, it underlined the ridiculous depravity, not so much of the characters who remain lovable in their naive venality, but of the situation which has reduced them to base animals cavorting in their little cage.
In the end, the couple’s balloon of dreams bursts upon their finding out that their macho president is no longer in Malacanang. The play can be read as an indictment not only of the ousted macho president, but also of the whole machismo mentality, which is just about ready to prostitute everything to the altar of power and avarice.
But it was Lallie Bucoy’s piece that really bowled me over, for the intrepidity of its staging as well as its poetic and philosophical sensibility. Directed by Maribel Legarda, “Isang Libong Tula para sa Dibdib ni Dulce” (“A Thousand Poems for the Bosom of Dulce”) featured Juliene Mendoza as the limping balot vendor, Nor Domingo as the yuppie lover, and Tes Jamias as “Dulce.” The story revolves around a bashful balot vendor by the name of Totoy who murders “Dulce” and her lover in a motel room, and finds himself interrogated by his victims who, in surreal fashion, alternately resurrect, die again, and/or make love before his very eyes.
The first time I saw the 15-minute play during one rehearsal, I was immediately struck by the similarity of its subject matter to a short story by Tony Perez in his book “Cubao Midnight Express.” (The story, “Pamamanhikan,” happens to be one of my favorites in my favorite of Tony’s Cubao series.) I talked with Lallie about this observation and she confirmed her having read “Cubao Midnight Express.” The influence is easily discernible. Both the play and short story have a romantic poet-lover who’s also a stalker-killer. Both works have a character named “Dulce.” More importantly, both highlight the enigmatic duality of persons. The sweet, virginal, innocent “Dulce” (Spanish for “sweet”) can also be promiscuous, bitter, hardened by the realities of life. Beneath the facade of a timid, stuttering, romantic poet may also lie an aggressive, savage stalker whose love will not be denied, who will possibly kill when denied.
In both narratives, the seeds of violence had been sown in the poet’s mind through a traumatic experience in his youth. In Tony’s, through the poet’s rejection by his beloved and her dying moments after the rejection; in Lallie’s, through the poet’s sexual abuse by his own father.
Tony’s “Pamamanhikan” gives its reader the creeps, for it lets him/her into the workings of the disturbed mind of the serial killer as he shadows his fourth “beloved,” in the process, making an accomplice out of the reader. In Lallie’s “Dulce,” the audience slowly realizes that what is taking place right before them is not a dialogue between the victims and the killer, but the rambling monologue of the balot vendor as he justifies his action (probably his first killing) to himself. As an audience, we are given the creeps even as we laugh (while at the same time wondering why we are laughing) at what is, upon closer inspection, horrifying.
“Sorry. Hindi ka pala si Dulce,” the balot vendor awkwardly apologizes to the corpse as he realizes his error. (The audience laughs, and then falls silent. A case of a fatal mistaken identity. Funny, yes, but not when it happens in real life. And it DOES happen in real life.) Reflecting on the material of the play, one realizes that it can, in fact, be played not as a comedy. Perhaps what thrilled a lot of the audience was the play’s effective straddling of both the realms of grave terror and light-hearted humor.
In the mind of Totoy, the balot vendor, it is the yuppie lover who is the interloper, and not vice-versa. Of the three characters in the play, he is the only one without a name. “Dulce” is eventually unmasked as Mabini. Totoy remains a “totoy,” a child. While the yuppie stays nameless, distant, unknown, even when he is temporarily transformed into Totoy’s father.
Totoy may be a limping stutterer but he’s a poet and his love is pure, divine. Just as Dulce is divine, like his own mother… like Mama Mary herself. The yuppie, a lecher like his father, does not even qualify as a true lover. For Totoy, it is he and Dulce who are the rightful sweethearts… who belong together… like mother and child.
Totoy’s limp and stutter may have been the physical, albeit unconscious way of distancing himself from the father. The stutter may have been a way of coping with the incomprehensibility of what he has experienced and what he later finds out about his beloved mother. The limp may have started out from the pain experienced in being sodomized and later became a welcome mark of disfigurement to repulse the father. Much later, it probably became a source of pride and distinction. His handicap would guarantee his not following the footsteps of his violent father.
Totoy had set out not to be like his father. He would be everything that his father was not: he would be a poet, and create, not destroy… he would love and revere his mother, and by extension, all women, who are none other than the images of his mother…
Why does he ultimately succumb to the impulse of destruction? And why does woman bear the brunt of his anger?
The artist, as they say, has a roundabout way of courting the approval and acceptance of others. He/she invests, in varying degrees, a part of himself/herself in the artwork. For some, the identification between the self and the work becomes so total that the rejection of the work would be tantamount to a rejection of the self.
Totoy, the artist, may not have that kind of total absorption in his poems. But he finds his “beloved” with another, right after finding her “unintentionally losing” his precious gift of a poem. The pain of a double rejection may have been too much to handle for Totoy’s already warped mind.
Why then does the woman bear the brunt of his anger?
It is from the woman, after all, that he suffers rejection.
But has he not promised to honor the memory of his mother in all women?
This is probably what rankles him the most. That his sweet beloved has not lived up to his idealization of how and what a woman should be: a mother… more importantly, a virgin-mother. Like Mama Mary. (Again, this may seem to be ludicrously simplistic, if only it were not subscribed to by “real” men, who are actually, “totoys.”)
Totoy had set up a rigid demarcation between his loving mother and lustful father. Everything good, pure, and divine he has identified with his mother. Moreover, the embrace of the mother is equated with the embrace of an immaculate virgin-mother. (“Ang yakap ko – ng ina – at ang yakap ni Mama Mary ay iisa.”) What is uttered primarily as a sign of unconditional love is taken to be a sign of untainted purity.
Totoy is bound for a catastrophic disappointment. For what woman can hold a candle to the Virgin-Mother? And yet, this is what Totoy demanded of every woman. Including his own mother.
Thus, the utter sense of betrayal that Totoy felt upon witnessing his father fondling his mother’s bosom. The very bosom which had been his refuge and solace when abused sexually by his father. The very altar of purity and love profaned by the lust of his lecherous and violent father.
Totoy could not conceive of his loving mother as capable of having sex, much less of having lust. Her bosom must not have a sexual function. It can… should only serve maternity.
In the end, Totoy acquiesced to his father’s judgment of his mother. In having her sacred bosom profaned by lust, his mother proved to be worse than his lecherous father. She proved to be a whore, a prostitute. A lying one, at that, for she was not like Mama Mary at all. She was never a virgin-mother.
Totoy proved to be his father’s son, in more ways than he realized. For like his father, he has turned to violence. Like his father, perhaps he does not even realize the greater violence that he has inflicted on women in reducing them to virgin-mothers (the good ones deserving of respect) and whores (vulgar playthings undeserving of respect). At first glance, Totoy’s appreciation of women (as virgin-mothers) may be regarded as the exact opposite of the macho appreciation of women as sexual playthings. It is in fact just the other side of the same coin. When one appreciates women solely for their bosom (whether it be as nurturing mothers or as sexual playthings), it boils down to the same thing: a reduction of women into their breasts. (Isn’t it the case that macho men always love and respect their mothers?)
The absurdity of Totoy’s categorization of women into virgin-mothers and whores is further revealed when one notices the elision of wives (partners). For the mind of a child (totoy), the role of a wife as partner is subsumed into the role of a caring, nursing mother.
Even as Totoy grew up to be a man, his appreciation of women remained childish. Save for his lust. He tried to sublimate his desire through his poems. And he expected the same from his beloved. Thus, the resentment that Totoy had when his sweet beloved turned out to be just as sexual and human as his mother. (“Inilagay kita sa isang pedestal, hindi kita inihagis sa kama. Inalayan kita ng mga tula at hindi ng mga halik. Nagkasya ako sa pagtingin sa’yo at hindi kita hinaplos. Tinulaan ko ang dibdib mo at hindi ko nilamas. Sa huli, ipalalamutak mo rin pala ang suso mo.”)
To add insult to injury, while Totoy would give up his lust for his love, to his sweet beloved, love doesn’t even enter the equation. Or probably (and more correctly), in her own inimitable way, her love is more accepting and unconditional. (Like Mama Mary’s?) She doesn’t demand and expect her lover to love her. When asked by Totoy whether the yuppie loved her, she replies, “Hindi ko hiniling na mahalin niya ko tulad din ng hindi ko hiniling na bigyan mo ako ng mga balot mo.”
Perhaps the most powerful moment in the play was when, towards the end, as Totoy stabs his beloved “Dulce,” she cries out, “Hindi ako nagtatrabaho sa Isetann. Mabini ang pangalan ko! Mabini ang pangalan ko! Mabini! Mabini!”
Horror. For a brief moment, in the very act of the violence of the reduction into the same, difference cries out, “I have a name! A unique name! And you can never reduce it into the same.”
Terror.
Error. Totoy acknowledges this difference: “Hindi ka pala si Dulce.”
Pallor.
Stupor. “Sorry.”
Tremor.
Torpor. Breaking the shell of a balot on the breast of Mabini, Totoy maintains, “Pero pinababoy mo pa rin ang suso mo.”
Tumor.
Mortis…
Rigor.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Could not agee with you more..