The New Dentists

Carlos Malvar

Part I

“Bee, you can’t be serious,” my girlfriend says. She does that cute exasperated look that I like. I grin. “I can’t read this. This is crap. Crap that only your school can produce.”

I’m used to her jabs. “Just read it ok,” I take a sharp turn by the Mini-Stop on the corner. “There’s a killer epiphany in the end. Very Tony Perez. Modesty aside, it’s almost a Krip.” Two more blocks and I’ll have my girlfriend safely home. I see the derelict, beaten gates of Teachers Village residences and I die a little inside. Why does poverty have to exist?

“I don’t have to read your crap, because I already know how’s it going to end.”

“What’s up with you?” I ask. I check the date on my iPod. “It’s too early for you to be menstruating.”

“Oh, god. Not that card.”

“Hehehe.” I really laugh like that. He-he-he.

“You write crap, ok?” Then, she adds: “It’s not your fault, really. You come from a tradition of a paradigm so impractical it’s bound to implode on itself soon.”

I hit the brakes so suddenly the Business Ad books I have sitting on the backseat slides noisily on the floor. “Why do you have to go ad hominem on my ass?”

“Uhm. Because you say things like ‘ad hominem on my ass’ when your family name’s Gumapas?” Don’t let the rising intonation fool you; that’s a statement right there.

“Why am I sensing a lot of hostility?” I grin at her in that way I grin at her when I want her to give me a blowjob, like last Wednesday night after watching a movie in Eastwood and we were…

“Don’t grin at me like that. I’m not going to give you a blowjob.” She narrows her eyes, which in fiction translates to disbelievingly. “I’m tired ok. Just…just drive me home.”

I shift to drive. An emaciated dog crosses the street, and its ribs were poking through what little flesh it has. It’s a metaphor moment.

“Please don’t tell me just turned that dog into a metaphor,” my girlfriend says, following my gaze.

I roll my eyes. I can roll my eyes without looking gay because I’m rich enough. “If you’re really that good, tell me how my story’s going to end.”

She sighs. “The I-persona in your first-person narrative is going to drive along Katipunan avenue, see a sampaguita vendor, and have his epiphany right there, while the sampaguita vendor knocks on the tinted windows of his sports car.” She pauses. “Well?”

Well. Well, she’s right, ok?

“Ok. Maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t by default make my writing…”

“Crap. It’s crap crap crap crap. Bad writing. Fecal writing that only you and your people are capable of shooting out of your asses. Or should I say, arse?”

My cool’s not that easy to lose. Dating my girlfriend for more than a month teaches one the virtue of self-control and inner peace. That, plus I’m still waiting for someone else to have a more obvious probable cause.

“Ok, since your university… Oh, I’m sorry… THE university is so fucking great that you can look down upon my people’s writings with mixed pity and abhorrence, tell me, what’s wrong with my story?”

“I’m not going to get myself suckered in into an F. Sionil Jose-esque discourse-disguised-as-dialogue short story with you.” She looks at me haughtily. “I’m a meta-fiction kinda girl.”

“There’s a hyper-real sex for you afterwards if you oblige.”

I make her laugh with that. She smiles at me.

“It’s bad fiction because it’s such a limited view on social realism. All you and your people can write is just that: the little sampaguita girl archetype. All you do are variations on the same theme. Boy breaks up with girlfriend, drives along Katipinunan, sees the little sampaguita girl, puts his problems in perspectives, and then moves along. OR, boy runs away from his parents who don’t understand him, drives along Katipunan, sees the little sampaguita girl, puts his problems in perspectives, and then moves along. OR, boy breaks up with BOY, drives along Katipunan, sees the little sampaguita… well, you know the story. In fact, you wrote one.”

I park in front of their apartment. The engine idles.

“Go on,” I tell her. She’s cute when she’s annoyingly right. I want to eat her mouth right there.

“Even the semiotics of the archetype evidently shows just how limited, and, and, and cloistered the lives you people are living. Look: the little sampaguita girl archetype is always told in the first person POV. Why? Because you can’t think beyond yourselves. It’s always me-me-me with you guys. You are the epitome of what the whole post-modernist school of thought is against: you put yourself in the center, you become the center, and you try to explain the world in terms of you being in the center.

“And the setting! Oh, how quintessential you! It’s always in Katipunan. The most daring variations may happen somewhere else, but it’s never farther than C-5!!! Why can’t the story happen in Espana? Or in Taft? There are sampaguita vendors in Quezon Ave. too, you know.

“And they’re always driving!” she continues. “You know what I think? I think being in a car is your people’s safety zone, and that only goes to show how limited your view of social realism is. You address social issues only within the comfort of your cars, protected from the little sampaguita girl’s poor viruses by the metal enclosure of your cars. You are brave enough to look at the little sampaguita girl when you are assured she can’t touch you. Don’t you see what that implies? You are scared of her! You turn her into an object of horror and disgust while you exalt yourselves for that moment of epiphany when you realize some people have bigger problems than you do.”

I am silent after that. I want to tell her she’s wrong, tell her she doesn’t know me, she has no right to judge me.

But what if she’s right?

What if I’m such a poser?

She unbuckles her seat belt.

I stop her.

“I’m going to prove you wrong.”

She buckles back. “What, you’re going to write a poem this time? A poem about your father and how he expects too much from you and the world is unfair but you love your father anyway, and you couch this sentiment using the metaphor of either (but not limited to) a tree or an old house?”

I kiss her. Quick, but hard.

I reach behind the seats. I rummage through the Business Ad books that have fallen on the floor. My mom makes me sell pre-need educational plans to teach me the value of money I earned myself. I’m actually saving my earnings for a business venture. My best friend Andy and I are going to open a bar early next year. Finally, I find what I was looking for.

“We’re going to look for that little sampaguita girl, and we’re going to change her life. Tonight.” I say, holding the brochure of pre-need plans I keep as bookmark triumphantly.

I’m not sure, but that may be admiration in her eyes.

Part II

“You shouldn’t have brought her here in the first place!”

That: was my best friend Marco, running behind me and my girlfriend. Marco was to blame for everything. Also, I should tell you, he was gay.

Here: The Padi’s Point in Antipolo overlooking the city of… Errr, overlooking some city. More precisely, the unlit parking lot of the Padi’s Point in Antipolo on a weekday, days before the submission of my final draft for a writing class.

Her: The Sampaguita Girl.

The Sampaguita Girl: they called her Kring-kring, third in a brood of four. We found her selling sampaguita in K-tip, where they all do. As soon as I promised my girl that I was going to give The Sampaguita Girl a pre-need educational plan, she dared me to do it that very night. So, instead of dropping her off, I pulled out of their street, and we went looking for The Sampaguita Girl.

We didn’t find her the first time we drove by. So, I took a U-turn under the fly-over, and cruised again. Still, no sampaguita.

My girlfriend made no effort to hide her gloating.

“So…” she said.

I took the turn again. Still, no Sampaguita Girl.

“Warm Fuck!” I cried.

“So…” she said. Again.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“That! That…that…”

“Gloating?”

“I already used that!”

“When?”

“In my head! While narrating!” I flicked off the stereo.

She waited for me to calm down.

“Look,” she began. “If you are really bent…”

“Your word choice didn’t escape me.”

“…on finding this Sampaguita Girl, then you better do it by the books.”

“How?”

“Pull over that stoplight, and let’s have an argument about something very middle-class.”

“Seriously…”

“Time it so it’s a… there! It’s a red! Stop!”

I did.

“Now what?”

“The problem with you,” she screamed. “Is that you never ask what I like! Have you ever stopped to think for once that maybe, you know, just maybe, I’d like it we don’t go to Starbucks and hang-out in Mocha Blends instead? Huh!” She slapped the dashboard for emphasis.

And there she was.

By my window: the Sampaguita girl, knocking with her calloused knuckles. She was wearing dirt like it was Tan 12 foundation, and grime like shea butter body lotion.

“Look at her hair,” my girl whispered. “She’s wearing motor grease like it’s styling mousse.”

“Kuya…” I don’t have to attribute this dialogue; you can tell who’s block of lines these are. “Bili na po kayo ng sampaguita… Sampo na lang itong tatlo… pang-kain lang po naming magkakapatid…”

I couldn’t believe my luck. Here she was, The Sampaguita Girl, talking in italicized Tagalog.

“Filipino,” my girlfriend corrected me. “She’s talking in Filipino.”

I whistled. “Wow.”

“So… you roll down your window and hand her the plan?” my girlfriend teased. 

Marco when we buzzed him awake: pissed off, but dragged himself when I promised him beer. I was big on promises that night.

“Who’s this?” Marco asked when he realized he was going to share the backseat with Kring-kring on our way to Antipolo.

“Kring-kring,” my girlfriend said the same time I answered “The Sampaguita Girl.”

Marco popped between my girl’s and my seat to accuse us. “You do know that you have a minor, riding in your car, in the middle of the night, on our way to getting drunk, right? RIGHT?”

“Marco, stop treating Kring-kring like she’s a lower mammal by speaking in English, thereby excluding her from our conversation,” my girl said.

“What?” Marco and I chorused.

“You guys from your school always do that! You assume everyone outside your school can’t speak your language.” Then, to Kring-kring: “Gusto mo tayo kain? Ok, hintay ikaw. Tayo kain na, nene.” 

Having explained everything to Marco: “So,” he said, in between forkfuls of sisig. “All of this.” Swallow. “This madness when we should all be sleeping peacefully this night in October.” Swig of San Mig. “Is because of your,” my girlfriend, “criticism of your,” me, “story.”

Marco sniggered.

“Honey,” he faced my girlfriend. “It’s not like you guys are above formulaic idea pitfalls.”

“What do you mean?” She ground her cigarette dead on the ashtray.

“If people from our school write nothing but the Sampaguita Girl, then you, Great Learned Scholars of the Nation, write nothing but the dying father who one must visit for redemption or epiphany.” Marco said ‘Learned’ to rhyme with ‘non-existing nuclear warhead’. “When is that old patriarch ever going to die? Oh, and when he does, you start seeing him in the form of a muscular tree!”

“Don’t get me started on the type of writings you people write!” My girlfriend shouted.

“Who?” Marco and me.

“Gay people!”

I sighed in relief. Marco, “go on.”

“Gay people write nothing but gay stories. Oh, please. Do you really need three anthologies to articulate your coming-out woes?”

“Hey! Now you’re just being mean! You don’t know how it’s like to come-out to your loved one and be met with rejection. Or acceptance. Or the humorous-but-too-often-used ‘we knew all along, son, now get out of my dress’.”

They laughed together at that.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

Marco glanced at his phone to check the time. “What’s taking her so long?” 

THUS: The Padi’s Point in Antipolo, in the dim parking lot, jumping over mini-puddles created by vans leaking, or patrons throwing up, we raced for my car, shouting “Kring-kring” like three kids suddenly sobered up by a crisis.

“I can’t believe you made her buy cigarettes, you fucking dean’s lister you!” I said, punching him lightly on the shoulder in exasperation.

“Gender harassment! Hate crime!” Marco said.

“Not the time, Marco.” My girlfriend, pulling me away from doing more damage to my best friend’s face. “And not the time to blame Marco. Despite it being all his fault.” To me. “We must focus… FOCUS!… on finding Kring-kring, wherever she went looking for cigarettes.”

My girlfriend cupped her palms around her mouth. “KRING-KRING! IKAW AMIN HANAP! IKAW BALIK NA HERE!!! WAG NA IKAW BUY NG CIGARETTES!!!”

I let her do that for some time. She looked cute. And a bit red.

“Get in the car,” I ordered both of them. “We’ll find her better with the headlights on.”

We all jumped in. I started the motor.

I pulled out of the parking space.

There was a thud.

We were silent.

Marco broke it.

“I think, she heard you calling for her.”

Oh, shit.

Carlos Malvar is a Filipino writer and performance poet.