Filipino Pie

Photo credit: wikipedia

What happens when you throw a bunch of young men in their early twenties inside a cramped house, while they navigate the last stages of adolescence and start testing the waters of young adulthood as they deal with college life, finances, friends, and most especially sex (and their raging hormones)?  Well, you get the best pitch for a potential TV sitcom, which can be a potential hit.  The caveat to this, unfortunately, is that most likely, it will be rated PG.   Even worse, it maybe for “mature audiences only, since I have breached the topic of raging hormones. 

This is how I describe the first few years of my college life. 

 

Prior to  the start of the my second year  in college, I was at lost as to where I would be staying because the original group of boys that I belonged to got “disbanded” over some petty squabbles, so petty I could not even remember what it was.  So, I was desperate to find a house before school started.  My uncle learned about my dilemma so he introduced me to The Engineers, let’s call them in that collective noun (to differentiate them from my other future roommates, who I will probably tell more stories about in the future).  I might have introduced you to The Engineers in the past.  They were mostly enrolled in a prestigious (and expensive) university within Old Manila. 

I was a wee bit intimidated in joining these mathematicians since I have already established the fact that I was far from being a math wiz and I would always break out in hives at the sight of a parabola and Pythagorean theorems.  But beggars couldn’t be choosers.  I took the bait and just tried to see for myself how a medical student like me would react (or combust) against their algebraic minds. 

 

Apparently, there was not much difference. 

 

Boys that we were, the house would always be filled with loud sarcastic jokes every evening once all the Engineers and I started trickling in from school.  Since I was the quiet type,  I would be the designated audience, mostly just laughing with them and incapable of cracking witty one liners. 

Half of The Engineers had girlfriends who were literally part of the household and part of the family since they were present throughout the week.  And we have learned how to give privacy when it was necessary.  You know what I mean. 

You see, our boarding house (we call it that way), was very humble.  There were four rooms: the receiving area/living room, the kitchen, the singular bedroom and one common bathroom.  We shared the same bedroom, the ten of us (depending on the season, because the members of the household waxed and waned depending on the results of the final exams).  We had double decker beds lined up like barracks and we had a measly lockers for our personal items.  As for our clothes, there were no such thing as luxurious closets.  We stored our clothes in Orocan plastic drawers or sometimes in duffel bags stuffed under our beds.  And being Filipinos, we liked ironing our clothes, since they came out wrinkled being crumpled in the bag.  Sometimes, we would do this chore a few minutes before leaving for school.  In fact, I really did feel naked if my clothes were not crisp, especially for a medical student like me.  It just felt right. 

 

The jokes that would fill our house were always dirty.  We were used to it.  This would be coupled with deafening laughter and occasional stomping of the feet and clapping of the hands.  There were also events that would gather us in front of the TV; like basketball (I was not usually a fan of this except during semis or finals when everybody was so passionate about the game and everyone was separated by a thin thread of love, hate and mass murder), the TV show Friends, the gag show Tropang Trumpo, food (usually the cheap ones, and most importantly those restaurants with free items- free soup, free gravy, free rice, free hepatitis) and of course, porn.  Yes, you heard it right.  Porn.  Come on, we were young men of a certain age, so porn was a staple.  I think it would be undeniable that it became a part of college life. 

 

I promise that this is not going to be a gross story so bear with me. 

 

There was always a ritual when we watched porn.  We had a local rental video store close to where we lived, like Blockbuster Video but more “seedy”.  And in the Philippines, video rentals were not necessarily regulated by the government so you can really watch anything you can think of, even movies that were being shown in theaters as long as you’re okay with a grainy picture quality, occasional shadows of people standing in front of the screen and some sneezing you’ll hear in the background.  The video rental shop had registered the name of one of the members of the Engineers and he would be the official representative, and the one that usually decided on what film we would watch on movie night (including porn).  And all of us would pitch in for the rental fee, that’s how cheap we were. 

I’d like to clear that we did not rent porn all the time.  We actually liked watching movies and gave side commentaries while viewing, like film critics but with amateur standards.  Transformers would have been an instant classic to us if it were shown that year. 

But when it came to porn, we were more rowdy, so it was more like watching a boxing match than getting us in the mood.  With ten people around, how could you get in the mood? 

The deal was, every movie we saw should be “technically” viewed only once because we did not have a Rewinder Machine.  And the engineer who owned the VCR (VHS to our local language) would not allow us to rewind the movie in the VHS machine because it would apparently wear it down.  So, if you missed the initial screening, too bad, you have to rewind it manually.  And since there were ten of us that would be watching and the living room was a cramped space, not everybody would be privileged to see the premiere showing. 

And if you get signed up for the encore performance, you and the rest of the group would take turns rewinding the tape manually using a fork by spinning it around for five minutes per person and then pass it around to the next.  I did that to see the X-Rated, animated version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which was not worth it.  And that would be my one star-review. 

Funny how all of us survived this phase in our lives within a tiny space full of people with the similar timelines of growth spurt. 

 

I remember one time coming home from ROTC training one Sunday, which was a mandatory course for all Freshmen and Sophomore Students in the Philippines, wherein I busted one of the Engineers having a sexy time with his girlfriend.  I did not catch them in the actual deed but the situation was a very embarrassing experience for all of us.  But I think, it was mostly I who got embarrassed. 

 

After ROTC training, I would be tired, hungry and dehydrated- hangry, in other words.  I thought I had the house for the weekend because usually, people would go home to the province during weekends and only a handful would be home.  But that particular weekend, I knew that I had the house to myself. 

When I tried opening the door, it was locked from the inside. I knocked and no one answered.  I assumed that whoever was inside probably fell asleep so I decided to eat lunch from a restaurant (i.e turo-turo) nearby.  When I returned, another roommate was outside the door, knocking.   He was getting pissed because he needed to get important projects that he left in our boarding house.  Fifteen minutes probably passed before Bengineer (let’s call him that) opened the door. 

My other roommate, Kengineer started bitching after we were let it. 

 

(The next few paragraphs will contain expletives and I did not bother censoring them since you probably know what it means anyway.  We oftentimes talked that way and we were used to it.  Plus this entry is about sex, so what’s the use of regulating my words?)

 

Kengineer: “Bro, what the fuck are you doing?  Are you masturbating or something?  We’ve been out here forever knocking on the door!”

Bengineer was only scratching his head in embarrassment and silently apologizing.  I was being my quiet self because I noticed that Bengineer was sweaty.  And take note, he was shirtless when he opened the door and just put on a shirt while we were inside.  I kinda got a hint of what he was up to. 

Kengineer was still ranting while rummaging through his personal items.  “We almost wanted to break down that fucking door.”

“Sorry, bro”, was what Bengineer could only muster. 

“Were you watching porn?”

“No!”

“Then what the hell were you doing?”

No answer. 

“I’m sure you could hear us from outside. Because I saw some movements behind the curtains even before you opened the door”. 

“Sorry again.”

 

Then Kengineer thought that his carping was enough and decided to leave and collect what he was initially intended to do.  “I gotta pee first”.

To which, Bengineer’s face started to turn red.  He immediately stood up towards the direction of the bathroom. 

But before Kengineer could reach the bathroom door, it opened by itself. 

Well, not by itself. 

Bengineer’s girlfriend stepped out casually, composed and looking very prim. 

Kengineer did not know what to say.  He turned red himself.  I was sitting on my bed with my mouth dropped to the floor.  The girlfriend just went straight to kiss Bengineer goodbye and left without saying anything, with her head held high. 

To which Kengineer said, “You, horny motherfucker!” 

I did not know if I will laugh or shrink in embarrassment in behalf of the girlfriend, who I think, became Bengineer’s wife eventually, and as far as I know, they are still together.  At least, the tryst they got involved in was not for naught.  That Sunday story was forever shared amongst ourselves and was always brought up in our “drinking” session, which always made Bengineer blush like a beet. 

 

I also had another roommate who was constantly fighting with his girlfriend.  The culmination of the fight would always be physical- with my roommate ending beat up by his girlfriend.  What’s funny was that they argue about things that were so trivial but would escalate into a major physical altercation.  Simple things like, who snored louder, why did they see a stupid movie and wasted money, or why he was late picking her up.  Once they started getting physical to one another, one of us  would casually step into the living room to subtly halt the fight before either one of them gets rushed to the hospital or be reported in the barangay hall.  We pretended to get something in the living room, or took our precious time getting ready to leave while putting on our shoes at a (as Miranda Priestly would put it) very “glacial” pace. 

The following day, they would be on each other’s faces again as if nothing happened. 

 

There are so many more memories that my old boarding house left in me.  I used to keep a journal where I would write the funny conversations that I would happen to eavesdrop to (like the one time an Engineer pronounced Vogue as “vog-yuu”) and my daily observations on how hilarious and ironic we were as young adults (like the one time we found a rat as big as a cat swimming in our big water Orocan container in the bathroom: one Engineer could not tolerate how messy we were, so he enforced a strict daily “cleaner” among all of us in order to make the house looked like being inhabited by humans.  As far as the water container, he wanted to burn it in the middle of the street-but ended up throwing it in the trash.  He bought a new one from Divisoria and made sure that it had a lid, so no rats or any other mammals could swim in it, not unless Bengineer and his girlfriend wanted to take a bath inside it on a lazy Sunday afternoon). 

There was also this one instance when someone left a cooked rice in the kitchen table during sem-break: the rice eventually turned into a “cake with green fondant frosting”, which means, the rice was enveloped with mold- it was one big lump, shaped like the pot it was cooked in and placed on top of a big dish.   But it was green- moss green to be exact.  It did not look appetizing.  And in addition to the mold, “visitors” showed up around it- i.e. roaches.  It was gross and it stunk so bad that the smell stuck to our mattresses.  It was never established who was at fault, or who was the last one out of the house and did not even have an iota of strength to put the frickin’ rice into the fridge or dumped it into trash since we would have been out of the house for two weeks.  It did strain our relationship for about ten days, and the house was spotless again for a brief period because daily “cleaners” were enforced.  And then, we were back to our old habits again.   

 

That house was a rite of passage for all of us.  Like what I’ve said, someone could probably make a sitcom about our life.  Or any college life of a Filipino student in Manila.  I’m sure it will be R rated if it involved young adult men.  Because aside from worries of passing the finals, all other concerns involved sex, porn, lessons on frugality, petty fights that turn violent, rats as big as cats, and the infamous Filipino pie made of rice with mold frosting. 

 

 

September 26, 2020