I told the old git to watch it. "I have friends in high places you know. If you don't stop taking the micky out of me I might send them over to your place and rough you up."
He then described in sadistic detail how mum made thick champorado for merienda and that at the moment he was about to put bonuan bangus on the grill, how the fish belly was so fat and how he stuffed them with spring onions, and how my mum was in the kitchen making ar-arusip salad and tomato/onion/roast aubergine salad with bagoong, and how the smell of pandan rice permeated the air he was breathing. He lowered the cellphone next to the grill so that I could hear the crackling charcoal "Can you hear that boy? Can you hear that?" he added. In the background our bitches started barking with delight at the imminent feast they were all going to have for dinner without me.
I hung up on the old man.
I wished that phone calls weren't so affordable. That telecoms were still controlled by a monopoly so my parents can't call me at odd hours just to make me jealous at the good life in Las Islas Filipinas.
I then looked up the number for the Department of Social Welfare or Bantay Bata so I can report my own folks for maltreatment of their own child, hoping they'd lose parental rights over me and that I can be lined up for adoption by rich folks who take no pleasure in seeing their only child going hungry in a foreign land.
I found the number and dialled it but a pre-recorded lady voice told me something about 'insufficient funds....call cannot be completed". Shit, I'm so skint I can't even afford so-called cheap phone call.
Ok fair enough that I can't afford a proper bottle of Chateau Lafitte to go with the cheap gruel that I have been stretching to last me until my welfare money arrives but I'm not exactly complaining. I've been subsisting on my own fat that I can feel my ribcage again. And my beer gut has shrunk that I finally have an unobstructed view of my wiener when I pee. (I think mine's a wiener or kolbasz at least. My ex-girlfriend said it's more like an earthworm - thin, dark, and dirty.)
Anyways, I had this craving for game so I went out armed with my Bontoc head axe, the one you used to be able to bring as hand luggage before all this airport security paranoia, to the deer park.
Then I saw this interesting scene. The does were together in one herd while two bucks lay in a distance, looking uninterested at those doe fannies. I brought out my spy hearing aid, not from MI6 but the one you order from those comic book bakcpage catalogs, and eavesdropped.
Two horny bucks are on the right.
Bambi: You are too much for me Rudolf, you sonofawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you.
Rudolf: [crying] Well, why don't you? Why don't you just let me be? It's because of you that I'm like this! I ain't got nothing... I ain't nowhere... Get the fuck off me! I can't stand being like this no more, Bambi.
(A couple of deer mating noises and that tree on the right shook rythmically.)
Then, more deer talk.
Rudolf: This is a one-shot thing we got goin' on here.
Bambi: It's nobody's business but ours.
Rudolf: You know I ain't queer.
Bambi: Yes deer.
ps. It only occurred to me now. Bambi is such a gay name to give to a buck. I must report Walt Disney to Opus Dei.