In a flooded jazz club in Makati
sago I choose to meet up here.
ezra it’s nice up here.
sago it is nice. you don’t mean that but it is nice. look at me, I’m enjoying myself. look at me – look in my eyes. watch me carefully. I’m going to order some pasta from the waiter. watch the way I do this.
ezra watching.
sago excuse me!
se sir?
sago excuse me, do you know what time the bands start?
se the first support starts at 10:30.
sago and it’s...
ezra ten past nine.
sago I’d love to leave this place for a while and walk the streets for an hour or so
se yes
sago is it still raining?
ezra no.
sago how’s the exit downstairs?
se it is flooded, the exit downstairs.
sago then we’re trapped here
ezra you can read my F. Scott Fitzgerald book if you like. it’s about
sago are you sorry we’re trapped?
se I feel something
ezra it’s
sago are you sorry we’re trapped?
se I feel something
ezra he writes about his breakdown. he was so successful so young in life, he was the toast of the literary world from his 19th birthday, and then suddenly at the age of 31 after year upon year of writing and more successes he suddenly realises he’s hollow and he can’t back it up any more
sago are you sorry
se I
sago would you like some pasta Ezra?
ezra not fussed.
sago fuss. would you like some pasta?
ezra I don’t care.
sago care. would you like
ezra pasta? I’d love some pasta.
se can I get you some pasta?
sago the only pasta you can get is the pasta of your tongue.
se what?
sago I say I mean it! I mean with your mouth, se, with the breath over your cords, I mean it! the only pasta you can get is baboy!
se ba...?
ezra ah.
se I’ll get you some pasta.
sago you can only get one pasta.
se you don’t want pasta?
sago I say you can only get one pasta! I say your pasta is baboy, your tongue is pasta just one pasta it’s baboy! your throat, your lungs, your diaphragm it’s, you get my drift?
se ba...?
sago Political! Baboy baboy baboy baboy, don’t smoke the tough stalks, careful with the sticky resin, and with your mouth baboy. that so?
ezra here he’s talking about the trumpets.
sago in not a thousand years am I talking about the trumpets! I only said one significant word in all that. it’s the significant word I draw your attention to as the point of my sermon
ezra it’s a sermon not about the trumpets.
se I want to get you pasta. I want you to eat it.
sago I want to see you try.
se You’ll enjoy eating the pasta.
sago You believe that.
se You believe...
sago I...
se Baboy?
sago Now I should get you pasta, shouldn’t I?
se Ba- Ba- ah – oy...
ezra ah, baboy.
sago Not in all the rain that sliced past these windows an hour ago, not in all that water up to your doorhandle drowning the taxis, was there a word except
se Is he smoking it baboy?
sago I dare say!
ezra I’m a little impressed, sago, but I’ve seen it on paper, you know. it’s not like you’re Houdini climbing out of the tree in the Garden of Eden. We all have tricks and some of them get written down and some even become famous.
sago Even? Even!
se It’s wretched ba – ba – baboy now.
sago Not in all the hours that you and I will have to share while these jazz bands play, not in all the hours that you and I will have to share while these jazz bands pack up and go home, not in all the hours that you and I will wait and the sun trickling through the smoke and the rains come again and go again, not in all those hours not in a single one of those hours, not even once in even one of those hours will there be
se baboy experiments! baboy-le-freak! sparkle baboy! baboy transfixed! baboy mixing on the basketball court with longhaired wristwatch man cold baboy and the police! you know baboy! you rented baboy! baboy? dying? heavens never! oh yo-ho, you gotta climb ba! ba! baboy in the rain...
ezra are you going to get this pasta then or should I?
