“Hunch According to Ria”: Excerpt from “Worship the Body” by Alvin Yapan

Alvin Yapan

Jaime came home drunk once. I woke up from the maid’s knock on our bedroom door. She said my husband was in the living room. Jun had him lie down on the sofa. When I got downstairs, Jun explained that Jaime and his clients seemed to have had a drinking spree. That didn’t surprise me. It was for times like these that we hired Jun as a driver. Jun apologized as though it was his fault. He said he didn’t know that Jaime was going to get that wasted. Jaime had thrown up in the back of the car. ‘Do not worry,’ I told Jun, this happens just once in a while. Just a few times a year. Only when he gets together again with his clients.

 

Worship the Body, Alvin Yapan (Penguin Southeast Asia, August 2024
Worship the Body, Alvin Yapan (Penguin Southeast Asia, August 2024

Reprinted with permission from Penguin Southeast Asia.

 

I asked Jun to help me carry Jaime upstairs to the bedroom. He was by the right shoulder while I was by the left. Because of Jaime’s weight, I knew that Jun was trying hard to carry all of my husband’s weight. He didn’t want me to have a hard time doing it, especially going up the stairs. We almost had to throw Jaime down onto the bed. The maid followed us into the room. She had brought warm water and a washcloth. She gave the basin to Jun and stood by the door to wait to replace the water. Jun helped me prop Jaime up in bed so we could take his polo shirt off. I couldn’t tell Jun that I’d take care of it. I knew that I couldn’t carry Jaime by myself. Perhaps Jun noticed how my nose wrinkled upon seeing the vomit that clung to the polo shirt’s collar. Jun said he would be the one to wipe the vomit from Jaime’s cheeks and neck. He said he would take care of it first, before the vomit in the back seat of the car. He even managed to crack a joke. He said he would leave with the maid later who was watching them from the doorway. I didn’t object any more. I started taking off Jaime’s shoes. From the foot of the bed, I saw how Jun wiped Jaime’s cheeks and neck. He seemed very familiar with my husband’s body. That was when I discovered that the sacredness of a place does not depend on it remaining a secret. Sacred was the groove behind my husband’s ear, the groove where I’d put my tongue, my finger as our bodies made love. That was my secret nook in Jaime’s body, if a lover’s body could be called a home. When Jun touched it, without having to guide his hands with his eyes, I thought that it was no different from the way a gardener cradles a bud about to bloom at dawn. No different from the way the bodies of fish slice through the salt of the sea. No different from caressing a scar in remembrance of a wound.

My eyes opened to the hands of Jaime and Jun. They were no different from larks, kingfishers, and herons in their flirtations with the earth as they fly. They soar away from the earth and do not descend from the skies for a spell. Every time Jaime and Jun were close to each other, their hands were like birds swooping into each other’s path. Their skins never touch. There was the passing of glasses, of cutlery, of bags without even the tips of their fingers touching. But I knew, even from afar, even when I was just observing them, that they knew each other’s bloodbeat just as the bird knows the world’s tug. Their fingers were merely sending out feelers. The waft of body heat was enough to be assured of each other’s presence before leaving again like a bird soaring skyward. Even Jun’s eyes were birds when he looked at Jaime. Jaime once asked Jun if his clothes looked fine. We were going to a party then. A friend’s wedding anniversary. When we got out of the car, Jaime turned to face Jun and asked if his clothes didn’t look bad. I was holding Jaime’s hand to feel how he reddened, when Jun looked him over, when Jun’s gaze examined his entire body from head to toe.

But I only noticed all of that because that was also how Jaime would hold my hand. That was how his hand felt when he had his hand on my waist from behind. He was like that when he whispered. That was how he looked at me when he gave me the red roses. I also knew how to become now-earth, now-water, hot and cold beneath his winged palms. I knew how his eyes made a map of my body. Oh, how light the birds are in flight but how heavy, too, because they will surely come down to earth! That indeed is how the bird plays with the earth in riding the wave of wind in the air. At the same time, I could almost see how Jun became water beneath Jaime’s body, became heavy now, then became light on top of him. Jun became water, a vast sea called to by Jaime’s wings. He became a harsh sea in the rise and fall of his wild waves. He also became a tranquil creek, a glass surface for Jaime’s own body to mirror as it flew like a kite. A kite holding on to the string of a lover’s body, of a mate.

In the meantime, I kept to myself what I had discovered between Jaime and Jun. I do not know why. Perhaps because what I discovered didn’t come out of big things. They were only small matters. I couldn’t trust my intuition, which, as things were, no longer knew how to separate roses from the colour red. It is humbling to know that I can’t possess the power of becoming earth and water beneath a beloved. I can’t possess even the courage of a bird to fly off into the vastness. No one person can possess such powers.


Alvin Yapan is the author of Worship the Body.