A mugful of coffee

From my personal archives. February 2006

“If anything can go wrong, it will.” These words, known as Murphy’s Law, took effect on me one Wednesday night. Before the night ended, however, I was able to formulate my own law: “If everything goes wrong, something will make you feel all right.”

My roommate and I were supposed to watch “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” because my teacher in Art Appreciation required the class to write a movie analysis about it, but we ended up watching “Jarhead” instead. “Maximo” had been shown the previous week and we missed it, so since we were already in the cinema, we decided we might as well watch a movie and chose the US marine’s memoir of the first Gulf War, though I had an ugly premonition upon reading in its poster the teaser, “Welcome to the Suck.”

The movie was wickedly funny and made me forget that I had not yet taken my supper. When the soldiers arrived in Saudi Arabia, the lead actor (Jake Gyllenhaal) narrated how they killed the time while waiting for battle. The candidness of it was part of the reason the movie earned an R18 rating. I was dumbfounded in a moment when he said that, with other masculine activities, the soldiers fought boredom by “looking at Filipina mail-order bride catalogues.”

I heard gasps and “Whaat?!” from the few other people in the audience. Someone near me muttered, “My, Is that what they think of Filipinas?” I turned my attention back to the screen. I was just surprised to hear something about Filipinos in a big-budget American movie, and I didn’t consider what the actor mentioned as degrading or anything.

Halfway through the movie, the soldiers suddenly talked in whispers, as if they fear we will hear their top-secret plan and turn them in to the Iraqis. At first, I thought it was part of the sound effects, but after twenty minutes or so the soldiers still kept everything to themselves. I marched out the cinema thinking about the Consumer Act of the Philippines and complained to the guard. I went back inside, and soon a small group of the mall’s employees stormed the operator in his booth.

The operator had obviously fallen asleep. In a couple of minutes, the whole theater was blaring again with hip music and the soldiers’ profanities. I had lost track of the movie’s story. Worst, my bad eating and reading habits for the past few days took their toll, and my temples started to hurt like hell. I endured the pain just so my roommate could watch the ending.

I had misfortunes that night to last me a lifetime—or maybe just a week. I failed to catch “Maximo,” barely understood “Jarhead” and left the movie house with a terrible headache. I asked my companion that we try a newly opened coffee shop. A cup of coffee takes away my headaches, whether after I had too much drink or when my migraine attacks.

We were served a mugful each in the coffee shop. While I was sipping my coffee, a man in the next table suddenly talked a little too loud, and his topic was the cities of the United States he’d been to. He was blabbering in English, nasal and all, but his looks and accent betrayed his native ancestry. He was talking not to a foreigner but to two fellow natives who did nothing but grunt and occasionally chuckled while listening. I felt like I was watching a play titled “New Yorker in Koronadal.”

We emptied our mugs and rode a tricycle back to the dorm. My roommate couldn’t help himself in praising the coffee and seemed to have forgotten the mishaps I led him to. He must also have gotten too weary that for the first time, he wasn’t attacked by his insomnia and fell asleep ahead of me, making me wonder if his coffee had trytophan instead of caffeine.

I stayed awake until everyone in the dorm was tucked in bed, including the guard. I plopped down the chair and massaged my head, trying to remember the advice a hilot aunt once gave me: find the throbbing vein and massage it gently until “the air trapped inside flows out.” I kept repeating the procedure until every single engorged vein in my forehead and nape was reduced to its original size and the pain stopped.

My thoughts drifted to the reaction of the moviegoers when Filipina mail order-brides were mentioned in “Jarhead.” I could understand their indignation. They accuse mail-order brides (or, today, e-brides) of cheapening the image of Filipinas. For me, however, I can’t blame many of our women if they marry foreigners they barely know in their search for a better life or desperate struggle to escape from poverty.

Besides, many Filipinos who condemn those women do so not to fight for a moral cause or uphold women’s dignity. It’s just that the care they give to the opinion of Americans is far greater than the understanding and help they are willing to offer to their fellow Filipinos.

I thought of the man who was bragging his trips in the US and his fake twang. The patriotic blood in me boiled when I saw him acting more American than Americans in the coffee shop, but during that solitary moment in the room, I could only be sorry for him and other people who still couldn’t shake off their colonial mentality. It is enough for now that I’m willing to accept everything—good or bad, from praiseworthy to shameful—about this country and do something I can about them. And when we are invaded by another country, I will also put my hands on a rifle and let myself be welcomed to the suck. (I'm no longer sure if I'm still ready to do this hehe.)

It had been long since the last chance I had to feel the peace and quietness of the night and think about love for country. Had it not been for the mugful of coffee, I would have spent the night sleepless with headache and disappointment.

I lay down on my bed as the effect of caffeine wore off. I remembered that I still didn’t know how to accomplish my movie review and I would surely suffer from hyperacidity the next morning. Still, I slept fitfully. I need not worry too much about trivial matters, even serious ones, for at the end of the day—or of the night—there’s always a mugful of coffee to give me the much-needed bliss. And the mugful of coffee need not come in the form of a hot, dark liquid with caffeine. It may be encouraging words from a friend, a sweet, shy smile from that classmate named Meriel, or the invisible yet deeply felt hug from God.