dance of the dunces

(from the title of De Quiros' compilation of essays. i have memorized the steps to his ballet of buffoons, his foxtrot of fools, and my favorite, tango of tangas.)

"fool me once, shame on you. but fool me twice, shame on me."

a couple of days ago, marvi, friend and fellow CW major, told me that she got her remuneration (you have to love that thesaurus) from the UP Press bookstore already and that i should get mine, too. we both worked as student assistants there and were promised compensation for service(s) rendered with books of our choice (they pay P25 worth of UP Press published books an hour). brimming (not a typo, the 'b' was placed there intentionally) with excitement, i gleefully texted our boss, ate shie (pronounced, shyeh) that i would be there the next day to collect. her reply came swiftly, an acknowledgement of my message and the appropriate "see you then" closing. her message ended with a strange request:

[favor naman, palodan (sic) mo naman me 100. bayaran kta tom] [parentheses mine]

to which i should've immediately replied with:

[gago ba u? la pera me.]

but i didn't. ate shie and i were okay, but not really close. she was fairly reasonable as a boss - she didn't go postal on me when i signed O.R.'s (i was practicing for my fans' day). so, i gave her the benefit of the doubt - it must be an emergency, she had her hands full, she couldn't get out of the press to buy load, aliens abducted her wallet. still, the expression on my face as i read this part of ate shie's message was the same look i had on while reading derrida ("the center is not the center"). i was baffled. flabbergasted, even. being the nice guy that i am (i think i'd make a cute doormat), i pasaload-ed her P50 worth of load (i had 60 at the time) and figured that was the end of it. a few hours later, just as i was about to pop an art film in our dvd player (two episodes of a hentai series entitled New Angel, if you must know), i received another text message from her. this time, things were fishier than usual:

[patrick, favor ulit. palod (sic) 300 naman me. kelangan q talagang tawagan si sir rhoneil] [parentheses still mine]

aside from the name "sir rhoneil," i didn't understand why i was being pestered with these requests. as if i had unlimited amount of load at my disposal. it hadn't occurred to me, at this point, to stop and ask myself, "what the hell is going on here?" i did find it strange that ate shie, knowing that we weren't close or anything, was suddenly asking for favors that would have me go out of my way (nothing should come between man and his porn. that just ain't right.) to purchase 300 pesos worth of load. but did that deter me from granting her request? nope. i put down the dvd player remote i had in my other hand, collected all the loose change littered around our house, and headed straight to the video shop beside mang bart's. the place was only a couple of blocks away, it takes one around 10 minutes to travel twice that distance. i had one foot out the gate when my phone let out a familiar krek-krek - 1 message received:

[nasan na? pasensya na, nagmamadali kasi me]

the nerves (plural. sobra na siya, pre. nagmamadali me? inamo ka u.). it's not my fault that time is linear, and my sexy gait generates a delayed ETA. got the card for P285, texted her the card and PIN, and headed for home. then all of a sudden, a pebble gets wedged between sole and slipper. i never knew that pebbles nowadays looked a lot like 10mm-long shards of broken glass that buries itself in one's flesh. i had blood spurting all over the place. querentino had something like this in mind when he filmed kill bill. this is what i get for helping someone out. talk about karma. i knew i shouldn't have made fun of that kid with polio back in my high school - mimicking his john wayne walk. now, it was my turn to saunter home like a jackass, a jackass with one good leg.

am i done? nope. the next day, i received the now all too familiar demand:

[pwde k p bng bumili ng 300 lod (sic) 4 me, mayng gabi me daan jan k?bale 650 ang utang q sau but 750 ang iba2yad q] [why bother?]

i've never been much of a super sleuth, but there are a couple of things in this text message that imply the actions of a fiend - 1) given that ate shie and i are not really close... simply put: who asks for load worth 100 and above for three straight days from a not-really-close friend? and 2) ate shie doesn't know where i live ("mayng gabi me daan jan k?"). something is clearly amuck here.

true enough, i went to kalinaw yesterday and asked ate shie what happened to her the past couple of days. her reply was, "pili ka na ng mga libro mo." heart skipped a beat. did she just dodge my query? after executing her command, i asked about sir rhoneil. she just gave me this are-you-even-from-this-planet look. heart skipped two beats. that was it, i thought. this was when i told her to pay up - i might have been a little bit vague and a tad bit indirect. i was thinking, "you fugly skank bitch, where's the money you owe me?" but instead, i said, "ate shie, ikaw ba 'to?" - showing her the text message i got the day before, "her" text message asking for more "lod." (sic of this)

"hindi ako ito. pareho yung number except dun sa una - 0920 ako. 0927 yung nandito. sino 'to? ay, baket mo siya binigyan ng load?" heart stopped altogether.

fool me THRICE, i'll be your bitch and call you, "daddy."