Sleeping Around With Jon # 1: The morning after the night that wasn’t
Chart from I Love Charts
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This is a weekly column by Jon Morales. You can reach him at jonnymo@gmail.com or follow him on twitter @jonnymo. Or just post your violent reactions in Comments.
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11 AM Sunday morning. I’m in my underwear laying on my mat on the floor. There’s a girl sitting next to me, fully clothed. So pretty. She’s asking questions about the future into the air and then looking for the answers by opening to random pages of The Noblest Triumph and reading selected passages out loud to me.
It would only be slightly less weird if The Noblest Triumph was some sort of spiritual text, and not what it is: a book on property rights. Sometimes when she tires of the answers property rights hold for the future she switches to The Mystery of Capital and asks what it thinks. It’s a book on the importance of streamlined business registration procedures and clean land titles to developing economies.
I’m asking my ceiling, How the hell did I end up here? And dear god how can I get her to leave? I gave up on the having sex with her question about an hour ago.
Jay-Z said, ‘Homie straight finish your breakfast’, so that’s what I’m gonna do. Tell you a little bit about myself. I was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world is mad. No, that was Scaramouche. And I don’t know how to Fandango.
She said when I met her and asked her to come home with me, ‘Wait, I have to go do something first, I’ll meet you at your house later.’ Ok, I thought, the shrug-off. I’ve been here long enough, I know the deal. Say yes, then later when you’re safely out of personal contact range say, ‘Oh sorry, actually I can’t come’ via text. Fair enough. But she assures me ‘No, no I promise I’ll meet you at your place I just have to go do this thing in QC.’ I don’t press the issue; she’ll either show or not show. She seems nice enough, sincere enough and so, so pretty. I go on with my night.
630 AM. She’s there. The sunlight is starting to burn. She’s even prettier in the light without makeup on. Thank god, she’s not ‘club hot’. I give myself a pat on the back.
730 AM. My god. She’s mad. She wasn’t like this earlier. Was I just drunk and missed the clues that she was a crazy person? Surely I wasn’t that drunk? It’s so blatantly obvious that I’ve invited a crazy person into my home. Well, she is really pretty.
DEAR BEN. COULD U HELP ME TO WRITE A TRUE STORY OF MY LIFE MIRACLES, ALMOST ALL PEOPLE THEY KNOW AND HERD ABOUT ME. I HAVE SOMETHING TO TEL U. USHOW ME UR CAT. AND I KNOW WAT WIL HAPPEN OF THEM…DONT 4GET MSG. THE MEN IS THE HEAD BUT WOMAN TURNS IT. ITS ME YUNA.
I wake up around 1 pm. She’s busied herself during my nap by sending texts to my friend. Who is a woman. Whose name is not Ben. It’s really hot now, gets unbearable in my place around this time with no air-conditioning, with just the busted looking green fan plugging away. She’s also made a contraption. Isn’t that nice? She’s doing something. I know what that is. Seen it once before.
Well, that explains a hell of a lot. Apparently the ‘thing’ she ‘had to go do’ in QC was ‘drugs’. Sad Face.
PLEASE CALL ME IF U INTERESTED.
MY OFFER I WILL GUARANTY U THAT IF YOU SELL THE MANY STORY TRUE LIFE UR DEPT IS FINISH TO PAY IT.
Meth is a hell of a drug. It doesn’t appear to be a drug for lazy people. Or for those not mechanically inclined. The contraption she has fashioned consists of a half-disassembled lighter, a match, tin foil, and a disassembled ball point pen reassembled to fit their new purpose. I review the last few hours, the prophecies, the diagrams she drew, with the now sadly disassembled ball-point pen, of my name, a crudely drawn map of the Philippines, words, like heart, and love and arrows connecting them, a flow chart of madness, and understand. The story about Ramos and the Department of Agriculture and her family’s chicken farm which may or may not have been seized by a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the Ramos administration (or was he trying to stop the conspiracy?) while no less clear make a lot more sense.
I HAVE MANY TIME TO VIRTUE THAT I CAN DO IT ALLTRUE STORY LIFE OF IMORTAL TORCH, GOD KNOW I KNOW THE WINNING MUCH RACES ABOUT ALL COUNTRY MEN.
She invites me to her multi-level marketing meeting at 5pm. Just around the corner apparently. Tells me to invite ‘BEN’ as well. Tells me a few more prophecies about the country and its imminent downfall. I ask her to leave. She insists that the multi-level marketing will make us rich and the chicken farm will once again be hers. Though what you do with a chicken farm in a country headed for disaster is a little mysterious.
Now’s not really the time for me to demand narrative consistency. I tell her to leave. She says ok. But ‘Next week may pupunta dito. Kukunin ka nila. Huwag mo silang labanan, bubugbugin ka lang. Pero kung di ka lumaban you’ll be ok.’ She leans her lovely, as yet unravaged face in, her highlighted hair curtains around my head as she kisses me softly on the nose, gathers her things and leaves.
It’s me, Yuna.
October 24th, 2011 at 22:08
Clap clap clap! Is this a column or a piece of flash fiction? Both.
October 25th, 2011 at 11:21
“It’s me, Yuna.” ????
October 31st, 2011 at 00:38
More columns like this and we might see a Sleeping Around With Jon book in bookstore shelves next year! :)