Flotsam & Jetsam (21) for May 1, 2006
(Gani Cruz, my fellow Star columnist, e-mailed me his review of my book in BizNews Asia, published earlier in April. Many thanks, Gani, for the kind words! Incidentally--and Gani may not even remember this--he was the very first critic to review my first book, Oldtimer and Other Stories, early in 1985.)
For Men But Not Only
by Isagani R. Cruz, in BizNews Asia
FINALLY, WE can read something meant for men that is not about women.
Man Overboard: Essays By, For, and Of the Smart Filipino Male, by Butch Dalisay (Quezon City: Milflores Publishing, 2005, 178 pages), is a delightful anthology of previously published essays on things men go overboard for, such as cars, clothes, gadgets, travel, gang mates, books, and well, women.
The essays talk about just about everything, and I mean everything. Here, for example, is a piece of advice about what to do when caught in heavy traffic: "Ever heard of the Portajingle bag? For P185, your wordless twisting and turning behind the wheel in heavy traffic or your mad dash down the highway for the nearest clump of cogon grass could be over."
Here, on the other hand, is the exact opposite in terms of sophistication: "Last week … my newest baby – a PowerBook G4 Titanium – arrived. Like a proud Papa, my first thought was to give the newcomer a proper home, and I spent the next day trawling the malls and the online stores for the perfect TiBook bag."
Dalisay particularly loves contrasts. Here, for example, is his take on the generation gap: "Dads wouldn't be caught dead wearing the bellbottoms we thought went out with the last century; juniors wouldn't be caught dead wearing the de bastons they thought went out with the last century. … Fifteen years ago, hanging out with my students was cool – at least, I thought so, and they probably thought so, too; today, by mutual agreement, it's a pain to have to listen to what the latest and greatest tracks on mp3 are while you're trying to figure out how to juggle your insurance and tax payments."
Dalisay wrote the essays at various times and in various places. In Bellagio in Italy, for instance, while he is supposed to be writing a novel that will solve all the world's problems in one fell swoop, he wonders where hangers disappear to when they are supposed to be in his closet.
In Bangkok, he writes about having no money for anything the city is noted for offering to lonely men in shirt sleeves. Poverty makes saints of us all, or at least of Dalisay, as he contents himself with television, a couple of softdrinks and some junk food, and a gift for his loved ones waiting in Manila. No male who has been to Bangkok can miss the regret between the lines.
Dalisay has a great eye for detail and an even greater eye for incongruous details. Here is the way he remembers the Seventies: "Like most wannabe Charles Atlases, I once owned a Bullworker – a fat tube of chromed metal about as high as your waist, on either side of which was attached a thick rubberized cable. The idea was to hold the thing by the cables, and then to pull the left cable in the general direction of Paris and the right cable toward Hawaii. This was supposed to turn 86-pound weaklings into – well, 86-pound Samsons, albeit Samsons with an hernia."
And, of course, the main thing that defines what it means to be male in the Philippines – the car. There is no better way to invite the reader to read the whole book than to quote at length what Dalisay says about a man and his car:
"Indeed we like driving our cars around – one reason why no traffic scheme that depends on ride-sharing or on leaving your car at home is ever likely to succeed. Need ketchup for the fried chicken? Why, then, drive down to the grocery around the street corner. Going to Sunday Mass? Nobody ever said that driving to church, two blocks away, was any kind of sin. Whenever we feel like using the car, we will.
"But I don't think we buy and use cars for sheer or mere transportation. In fact, the minute we realize how joyless that long and arduous drive is going to be, we pull the nylon covers and grab a cab, an FX, a bus, or a plane. I wouldn't drive to Makati if I could avoid it, except that taxis can be as impossible to find at rush hour as parking space in the morning.
"No: it isn't so much utile as dulce, not so much utility as pleasure, that attracts us to cars. In other words, guys, we see cars as overgrown toys, the male equivalent of the Barbie doll, to be dressed up, accessorized, and pampered in more ways than a poet could count. We wash 'em, wax 'em, buff 'em, shampoo 'em, feed them with exotic additives, perfume them with rare scents, clothe them with extravagant furs and leathers.
"We have a fetish for newness: blessed with a new car (especially his first one), the Pinoy will refuse to peel that godawful plastic away from the sidings until it comes off like a bad sunburn. We're more faithful to our cars than to our spouses: any proposal to pull 15-year-old cars off the road will result in the kind of revolution they only dream about at Utrecht. We like to announce to the world at large that (1) we have a car, and (2) anyone who comes within a three-meter radius of it is an unqualified thief: thus we arm our vehicles with batteries of alarms and sirens, each of them noisier than a New Year's Eve."
You don't have to be male to enjoy Dalisay's book, but needless to say, it helps.
.jpg)
