Once many years ago, the Maker sat in a jeepney, quite bored by the Bee Gees blaring away on the stereo system turned full blast to announce the vacant seats in this multisensory contraption plying the din and traffic of Colon Street looking for other lost souls needing a ride.
Across him was an old lady hogging the last seat. Hers, of course, was one of the two best ones, just a step away from the exit. If she sat in an interior seat, she would have to struggle through layers of legs and feet just to get off. And she might have had a bad back or bum knees. She would not abandon her seat even when the dangerous-looking hippy tried to take it by pushing his butt into her knees. She held onto the back railing instead as if for dear life. The hippy decided finally to just stand on the step-board making out like the conductor. It was that or pick a fight with an old woman. The culture would not allow that. It would have been a bad ending to the story of his ride. And a jeepney ride is always a story written as in the style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, cubist, told from many viewpoints, multipoint perspective, inside many time frames, like a movie if it is done well.
For instance, the young woman sitting next to the Maker is a foreign student from Hong Kong. She is here both by her own choice and because it is cheaper to study here than in her native city. Her native tongue is a dialect of Chinese that few people here understand, much to her dismay. At home she has parents who operate a restaurant. But she has two elder brothers. She would be the one in the brood to be married away unless she went off on her own. So she decided to see the world, much in the tradition of mariners. She will be a traveller for the rest of her life. But for now, she sits next to the person she loves. They are young and vibrantly alive—even if and for now, her paramour is nursing a headache from having too much of everything, last night. It is morning now and so he figures it was only hours ago when he threw up all his beer and dinner out the window on the ride home. Home was arbitrary. There were the basement classrooms in the school where they studied, there was his own home or any of his closest friend’s.
Another young lady enters. She is holding a large spring notebook to cover her bottom as she bends all the way to the last seat, right behind the driver, much to the pleasure of the hippy on the step-board. The Maker’s view was less ideal but it was still okay. To be sure, he looked but it was only to practice his eye for aesthetics. His faculty of taste was merely enjoying the view. Meanwhile, the hippy has taken his role as conductor much more seriously. He waves in passengers. He calls out the jeepney’s destination using jeepney language honed to perfection. ’Bangon for Labangon. ’Punan for Katipunan, ’Hug for Lahug., etc.
“How does anyone get anywhere here? And how would we ever know where we’re going?” The Maker thought to himself, massaging his hangover with two knuckles to the right forehead. And then he checked himself. His girlfriend was a foreigner, by local standards, too physically demonstrative. He did not like the idea of her giving him a head massage right then and there. She would have done it too if only she noticed. She was funny that way. But she was looking instead at a middle-aged woman, two cute little kids in school uniform on each of her laps. Another beside her. They are all in school uniform. They are squeezed like sardines into the seats just like everyone else. But they will squeeze in two more and then speed away like the devil was driving in a mad rush to their final and penultimate destination.
“Hell!” the young lady in the white mini-skirt thought to herself. She thought this every time another passenger called out, “Palihug.” And then her brain would say on cue, “Hell!” For then she would have to reach over to catch the person’s fare and hand it over to the driver. The driver will pass her back the change, without even looking, reaching back, hand over shoulder. “Palihug.” And then she would have to hand it back to whoever handed the fare. “Hell!” She is praying for passengers to get off. This way she can slide sideways towards the rear exit and some other poor soul can take her place in this scheme of things, this story, which was not going too well for her so far. And it was only morning.
The jeepney to hell finally screeches to a halt not behind or in front but on the pedestrian lane near the Capitol building. Five passengers, sitting next to the white mini, get off. And she heaves a sigh of relief and quickly slides rightwards. In her hurried slide, her notebook drops from her lap revealing in its wake her true beauty. “Hell!” Now she would have to bend over to pick it up. Had the Maker sat beside her, he would have been happy to do this. But it was his girlfriend who played perfect gentleman. His luck.
The jeepney stops at the corner for an inordinate period of time and the Maker wondered why the hippy was not calling out its next stop. He was gone. He stole away with the passengers who got off. Did he give fare? Across from him, the Maker espied a sticker featuring a girl in bikini. Below her the words: “God knows Hudas not pay.”