I found this while rummaging through my files. And I kinda wish I tried writing more. Maybe I could have been good.
It’s pretty long so I’ll post it in parts.
Salvatore hates everything there is to hate about his life. He hates how every morning, without fail, he is woken up by the sound of chickens kept by his next door neighbors. He hates his next door neighbors, and their rusty Volkswagen yellow Combi Camper Van, the husband’s long beard he suspects to be home to various creepers living on bits of rice and coffee drops, the wife’s long and probably unwashed braids, and their daughter’s incessant beeping with her toy truck. He also hates the heavy traffic along EDSA (but who doesn’t?) which builds up between 8 in the morning and 12 noon. But what he hates the most is how he has to ride his next door neighbor’s rusty yellow, VW combi camper van, to work – to his luck, they do carpool. He wouldn’t have to ride with them if he has enough money to buy his own car, or even if the country’s public transportation system was the least bit efficient – Salvatore hates the fact that he was constantly broke, and his taxes end up paying for his president’s child’s education in some university in Switzerland instead of the expansion of the Metro Transit Railway.
“Fuck my life,” Salvatore would be known to say every 5 minutes or whenever he is faced with something he hates – whichever comes first.
Salvatore also hates beggars, riding tricycles, over cooked corned beef, cold coffee, and laser lights. He hates house music, typo errors, and his boss’s bald patch. But what he hates the most… even more than the sound of chickens waking him up in the morning – cold showers. Cold showers that kill his buzz from last night’s marvelous dream about Mercedes. Mercedes, the love of his life, living two houses away from him, married to a fat guy with short legs who just happens to be their Barangay Captain. Useless and fat and ugly yet married to the Mercedes who is so divine he’d almost dropped to his knees when he first saw her.
Mercedes was a goddess, at least she was to Salvatore. And he looked forward to the nights when he’d dream about her. Mercedes in a white dress, rolling around in a field with Mercedes, walking hand in hand on beaches with Mercedes complete with party balloons and Chinese lanterns for effect, Mercedes’s white neck, her presumably 36-D, perfectly shaped breasts, and her luscious black hair he wanted to run his fingers through. And he musn’t forget about Mercedes’s long legs he had dreamt so long about – wrapped around his waist, her smooth thighs… and Mercedes calling out his name. And then the cold shower happens. What a rude way to yank him out from his moments with Mercedes and her red, red, red lips. If only he could afford to install an electronic shower heater. No wait. If only he can afford to install a shower.
An empty metal drum and an old can of powdered milk for a dipper took up most of the space in his bathroom. An old shower curtain serves as a divider between his bath area and his toilet. A one bedroom rent to own apartment, with a stinky dead creek to his left, and annoying hippy neighbors to his right. It was about the only thing he can afford with his measly pay from his terrible job. Overworked, underpaid. Such was the story of his life.
At least he can afford an Ipod. About the only thing in his life that makes him happy (aside from his dreams about Mercedes, strawberry flavored popsicles, the smell of old books, and his dilapidated leather journal).
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