Kiosk

If he found being here with working women so objectionable, then why didn't he just up and leave? Or was it that things had suddenly changed.

The woman went back inside her room. I held my hand out to Bloom, who gave it a brief shake. His grip was limp and cold. He never took his eyes off the bottle of San Miguel on the table in front of him.

A circular courtyard.

The stars rose over the open ceiling.

***

Kiosk

We were tired of making our way down the street against a flood of drunks headed back to the base. Tired of the women swishing along the sidewalk, soliciting services you couldn't get in America. We were tired of seeing sailors strolling along with a Filipina girl hanginf off each arm. Tired, really, of everything.

Instead of prowling the bustling nightclubs on Magsaysay Drive like we've done all week, Spinks and I ducked into a side street and came across this little hole-in-the-wall. No neon here. No live band, either. Only a jukebox against the back wall, between the cavelike entrances to two bathrooms. Continually spilling out of the jukebox speakers was Cat Stevens 'Father and Son'.

The courtyard is a scattering of crippled bamboo furniture rimming a tiny dance floor that is cooled by the breeze from an oscillating fan.

The crop of women here aren't dressed in terrycloth bikinis, or dancing on a stage in clouds of colored smoke. And the table we sit at isn't crowded with half-a-dozen or more near-naked beauty queens with seductive smiles.

Nope. In this small dive there are just a handful of not-so-pretty women. Looking much older than their early-twenties. As if life had beaten the beauty out of them. No makeup smearing their faces. Unprovocative jeans. Blouses, neatly pressed but faded. These are provincial women. Probably new to the city, fresh to the trade. Most of them can barely utter more than a few words of English.

Spinks has been drinking all day. Too much. The woman slouched on the chair next to him plays with the snap of her little clutch purse. Occasionally, she sips from the glass in front of her. Every now and then she looks across the table at me with an expression that says she'd rather be somewhere else. For every four San Miguels Spinks downs, the woman gets a drink – probably tea-tinted water – for which she is handed a redeemable chip.

On the table in front of Spinks rests empty beer bottles. And those are the ones the ancient mamasan hadn't already taken away. Spinks struggles to his feet. He slurs out, “We should be getting back to the ship.”

I check my watch. It's well past curfew. If we get picked up, no shore leave when we hit Thailand, Korea, Singapore.. "Too late," I reply. “Sit back down and have another beer. Looks like we're here for the night.

From where we sit, I can see the front door, which is held open by a large stone. The hard rain strikes the banana leaves, rattling them. When I was a boy the sky often did like it did tonight; opened up without notice.

Scanning the establishment with his red eyes, Spinks says, "I bet my mom worked in a bar just like this one." He stares across the table at me, waiting. As if he expects me to reveal something similar about my own mother. Then he pulls out his ship-stamped Zippo and lights a cigarette.

The girl beside him says nothing. Her smooth face is stippled by the trembling leaves of the mango tree above us.

We're close, Spinks and I. Especially after we learned about one another. Both of us have Filipina mothers who'd been married to Americans. During the lonely hours when the ship slices through the open ocean, plowing from port to port, we spend a lot of time trying to understand things. Unlike myself, Spinks has never lived in the Philippines. I grew up here. He spent his childhood in the states. After his mother and father split up, his mother remarried another white American. When my mother's marriage was annulled, she married a Filipino American.

On the ship at sea, while plowing across the ocean from port to port, conversation between us hardly ever grounds to a halt.

Not like now.

Spinks sips his beer. The woman beside him raises her empty glass and spins the ice. "No more drink," she says. She leans against him and he shoves her away.

"Probably," Spinks says. "My mom whored in a place just like this."

In Tagalog, the woman I plan on sleeping with tonight tells Spinks' companion that she's lucky her man is drunk. Spinks' woman sighs and stares up at the ceiling. A few minutes later she gets up without saying anything, crosses the tiny courtyard to the toilet behind the screen.

Spinks continues to wait for me to say something. But what can I say that might possibly make him feel better? The fact is, my mother never worked the nightclubs. Her family owned more than a few of them in Angeles City. She wasn't even allowed inside the clubs after six o'clock. In the early afternoons, however, my mother and her sister visited each of the Grandfather's businesses to collect the day's receipts. After banking, they'd stop at a tiny roadside kiosk to have something to eat. In the kiosk no music played, no alcohol was served, no Americans flashed money. One day an American showed up. He struck up small talk with my mother. After that, he started coming to the kiosk every day. Eventually he convinced my mother to sneak out of the house one night. Not long after that, they eloped.

My mother's father disowned her immediately.

But I don't share these events of my mother's life with Spinks. Instead, I simply say, "People do what they have to do."

When his woman returns from the restroom and sits back down, Spinks jabs a finger in the air toward her andy says, "Just like this bitch. My mom was probably just like this stupid bitch."

Then Spinks ask the women at the table, each in turn, why they were whores.

I shrug and sip my beer so I don't have to say anything. After all, he's on the far side of sober. I doubt he'll remember anything when he wakes in the morning.

Then Spinks does something I've never seen him do. He buries his head in the crotch of his folded arms.

The woman he'd been buying drinks for all night looks at me over the empty beer bottles. "Bakit?" she asks, wanting to know why Spinks is crying.

“It's because,” I say, “you remind my friend of his mother.”

***
Possible Edits

I pulled out one of the plastic chairs and sat down opposite him. I turned to look in the same direction that he was looking. At the end of the beach were the jagged rocks, like muffins sliced in half, with waves slapping at them at regular intervals. Neat, graceful little waves -- as if they'd been measured off with a ruler. Beyond that, there wasn't much to look at.

The bamboo wind blocks that hung from the eaves clacked.
What made Spinks think she might change all of a sudden?

"Crazy," Spinks said.

"Everywhere you go it's the same," Spinks said in a flat tone, gazing at his hands. "The same women, the same bars, the same."

We were sitting on a bench in front of the hospital, waiting for the bus. Every once in a while the breeze would rustle the green leaves above us.

We had passed by seven or eight bars when Spinks anxiously looked up at me again.

The wind swelled up and the bamboo wind blocks that hung from the eaves clacked.

She looked confused. The white teeth between her parted lips looked like bones that had atrophied.

She grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. Her slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. "Did it cost a lot?"

"You think God made us for your pleasure," she asked, her face filled with disdain. "You think you can come here, do whatever you like with whomever you like, and we're just supposed to smile and spread our legs? You think maybe because your white it makes you better than us?" She paused to grab Spinks pack of Marlboros' off the table. She shook one out, brought it to her lips and sat waiting for one of us to produce a lighter.

She ran the zipper of her purse back and forth across its track.

We reached the intersection, brightly lit and teeming with traffic.

By that third day we decided that downtown was old hat. We went instead to a place . . .

The windows lit with a neon sign that announced the existence of women.

Depending on where in town you were, you could expect your presence to attract everything from mild curiosity to open hostility.

The windows lit with a neon sign that proclaimed that upon entering the establishment you would find only the youngest women.

A collection of rooms built around the courtyard.

"Can I sit," the girl said, taking the seat beside me.

Untrendy

A little streetcorner place called 'Dugout'

It was the truth, but for whatever reason, Spinks refused to accept it.

It was our third night in Olongapo City and we had just left Magsaysay Drive.

Spinks looked around the table. "I guess nobody but me thinks their mother was a whore." He shook his head. "Right." He had been drinking. A lot. His eyes were very red.

Spinks let out his breath. He picked up his bottle and turned to me. "So your mother . . . she wasn't?" He let out a little laugh, then brought his beer to his lips and gulped down half the bottle.

Weaving drunk across the bar.
A trio of working girls walked past. Spinks tracked them, scowling until they disappeared out the front door.

At times, he can sound like an American , but in fact he is a mixed kid

My thoughts jumped between

I looked at my watch. It was later than I thought.

She put a sweaty San Miguel bottle in front of him

Hunched over the table, I asked myself ***

She sat quietly, hands folded in her lap.