He says, "I wonder if I can avoid what fictionists are really doing, which is try to create stories that would be interesting." He meant stories contrived by the imagination to provide a plastic reality for man’s escapist proclivity, but stories---preferably in books---that would simply mirror reality. Whether the latter should turn out to be boring stuff for the majority’s buying power during that moment when a buyer tries to choose a book to buy by reading the books’ blurbs till something interests him, he’s not the least concerned. He’s tired already, for example, of constantly talking at lectures about his own story about the old man that grew long blond hair and ran for mayor of Lipa City, or about the much-anthologized one about a college girl who asked a priest to give her a son that she wants to raise to become a priest, or even the quasi-leftist story he’s most proud of, the one about a provincial teener looking for a job in the city that ended in tragedy in the hands of beggars while the teener tried to sleep under a flyover road.

He says now, "I’d like to write about my desk, solely. For example."

Sighing, of course, I said, "would that be ample material for a story? What is a story, after all? If a novel is a large slice of a life, or a large slice of life in a house spanning a century, a short story you might have to do must really be a story! In a way, your job is really gossip of some sort---maybe intelligent gossip, but really still a sort of one."

"I’d like to write about my desk, okay? Now will you leave me alone? Please?" The famous short story writer sat there sulking, even as I hastened to leave, almost angrily, throwing a plastic cup into his trash bin most displeasedly.

Let me tell you about his desk. This morning, while I waited for him to get into the room so I could start my proofreading, I gazed at his table and the things on top of it, and I thought: could this be the reason? all these little objects on the table? could these be the inspiration for his recent thoughts and recurring complaints about his story-writing? Could the vision over and above these things be the stuff sucking him away from fiction-making into the elusive field of moments obsessions called poetry, as an alternative lifestyle?

On the right of his desk, leaning on the wall, was a colorful form for enrolling with an Internet Service Provider, which could give him support for his contact with other writers and booksellers online, a form which he has forgotten to fill out since he bought his G3 Mac computer (the ISP enrollment is FREE for one year, although everybody knows the ISP fee comes with the computer price). Beside the form was a row of cassettes standing with their side labels to the viewer, therefore arranged like books. One of these was by a modern electronic music duo who do their thing with sampling machines, stealing snippets of sounds from others’ work to form new ones. One was by a quasi-feminist Scandinavian singer who couldn’t pronounce English properly, one by a new-electric-guitars-sounds-advertising noise band that sang of anxieties to do with one’s sexuality, one by a rap group that wants to promote anti-violence rap poetry, one by a working-class Briton who sings stories instead of poems. I know William's other cassettes, the music in them, what about---haven’t I listened to them all from day one when I took this proofreader’s job, six months ago? Haven’t I sulked with him on the porch of this house, taking notes as his secretary also as he composed lyrics from air?

I think he’s better at fiction than at poetry, or so the common thinking of critics tell me. I really don’t know, because most of his poetry sound like prose while many of his prose seem to pretend to be poetry, the latter as if wanting to become a poet’s prose. I don’t know, I’m only a proofreader.

William has been into this I-hate-fiction phase of his short-story writer's life for four months now, everyday almost telling me how he’s become bored with the life of a storyteller, how unintelligent it has seemed to him now, at least as a perspective on life. And what I’d do is refrain from disagreeing with him, lest I be screamed at again. What I’d do is tell him what he wants to hear: you’re just one hell of a fucking gossip! You gossip on your characters, you imply points by their existences.

The above is not to say William doesn’t have his charming moments. He has plenty of them. He's charming as hell. He's the fucking devil. Like a story, he proceeds like a stream, composed of poetic moments but still in a seamless flow---no matter how sudden the turns.

Among his cassettes, there’s one by the female rock singer who tore a picture of the Pope onstage and on TV and got rapped by even her own fans, one by a female British singer who sings stories instead of poems, and there’s one by the Beastie Boys, one by Nirvana. The reason why I mention the last two bands by their names is because they seem to have earned a quite comfortable place (as names, at least) in history that you can now mention them in a story you want to write, the way Saul Bellow mentions Olivetti the typewriter in, was it Humboldt’s Gift?---for it’s quite taboo to mention stuff that won’t be remembered, because stories are supposed to be read by future generations too. It’s the tradition, I know, in the mold of tribal epic-chants. One among many small but invaluable things I learned from the venerable and illustrious William of U.P., already that---illustrious---even at the young age of 35.

There was also a couple of rappers’ tapes, and one containing poetry readings by Hollywood artists of certain love poems by Pablo Neruda. Beside the tapes, there was an alarm clock that bleeps to alarm you, a picture on a standing frame of our illustrious short story writer hero, a standing frame with a picture of this hero's cute two-year-old son which the mother took with her when she left the illustrious short story writer for the province.

Why did she leave him? Because of me.

It's understandable to see also four cans of Miller beer, empty---if this were a movie we can solicit product placement sponsorships, except that short stories are not so popular anymore, if they’d ever been, short story writers become famous only to journalists who had English degrees (among other such elements in this city). There was a book of stories lying on the table, the type of stories---I've seen---that delved into a scene, treating moments like moments, seemingly unmindful of where the story would go, if you could even call them stories, because they were more like poems in paragraphs, but yet they still formed stories, however that was done.

I am aware that I am myself writing a story now, in emulation of my boss, in anger, in suicidal hatred of what I've become. Well, I usually just dive into this everytime I have bouts of, yes, hatred towards the man. Not hatred, really. Just getting mad. Like a moment ago. Because he says, "leave me alone," angrily, and usually I just expect him to smile at me after I say things I know he wants me to say, the things he wants to hear, the things he wouldn’t let me contradict, and I do it because I've fallen in love with him..

I’m beginning to have doubts. I’m beginning to think he wants me to contradict his position now.

I’m beginning to think he’s been using me to face certain facts about the reality of his profession/art, sort of like I’m his psychiatrist during his crazy attacks, his bouts of insane craziness within his short story writer life of a life. Fuck him, . . .

Well, all right, I began fucking him a long time ago. I was a student of his, I was also his wife’s student. This is fucking gossip, I know, but fuck. So I admit it. I fucked the man. I’d been his girl since college, and now that I’m taking my masters, I’m still his fucking proofreader, eager to be part of his storytelling life even as he wants to get out of it.

On his desk also, the lock to his studio---the studio where this desk was/is. Below that studio, his online-publishing and bookselling firm’s office, run by one person who also designs his website, another student assistant, female, no he hasn’t fucked her I’m quite sure of that.

On his desk was also an envelope full of Sesame Street stickers he’s going to be sending to his two-year-old son. On his desk also, a mug with North American Indian prints, holding a bunch of pens. On his desk, a dictionary lying on top of a folder I don’t know the contents of. On his desk, a jar of marshmallows, a business card holder, a magnifying glass, a Chicago keychain carrying keys (which he got from a cousin in Chicago when he went there to lecture for a bunch of Filipino-American student literati), and now may I describe the left side of his desk?

In the middle of course was his G3 Mac monitor, and keyboard, and mouse. To the left of this short story writing machine, a mug with coffee from last night, speakers connected to his CPU, the CPU, a red horn on top of one of the speakers he got for his son for Halloween but failed to send, a headphone, a Sony Walkman, an ashtray with cigarette butts and ash, a sculpture of a large piece of shit, a pile of short bond paper which probably has some story in progress on which the shit sculpture sat, a tower of plastic cups, a flyer on a pizza shop’s opening, a blue lighter, a tiny chessboard on top of the CPU (which he also stupidly bought for his two-year-old son but failed to send), a cardboard crown from Burger King, a plate with traces of cake icing, a spoon on this plate, also with traces of cake icing, traces of lipstick on this spoon, my lipstick. . . . Then there’s the side table to the left of his main desk, on which sat his printer; there, that morning, this morning, a pack of cigarettes lay on top (of the printer, I mean). There, printer ink boxes were scattered about (on this side table, I mean). There was a tall glass on the table, traces of lipstick.

I was sitting on a chair beside his big chair that morning, this morning, my undie still on this big chair, I was wearing his Dockers, he was still in bed, and I was quite ready to start a day of proofreading. He enters and says---what did he say, sulkily? "I’d like to write about my desk," signalling another day of sulking, of wanting to write poems instead, even with the university grant stipulating he must finish this his twelfth short story collection with a novella thrown into it, since everybody thinks he writes lousy poetry, . . . or be thrown out of university for having an affair with a student, via the demands of the faculty opposition. The grant got us this chance to be really introverted, away from people’s gossiping eyes, even though every now and then I’d go out through his online publishing and bookselling firm's office below to go to the campus Seven Eleven.

The university people like him, love him, are proud of him, wouldn’t want to throw him out, but the opposition within, they must be convinced of his value.

He, meanwhile, isn’t convinced of his own value. William thinks a poet should have gotten this grant. And besides, he doesn’t believe in grants, he doesn’t want anybody subsidizing his art, but it’s here, an unwanted destiny. Wanted when he was younger, abhorred later somewhere when he was 32. A grant, like a prize from the Palanca contest that wants to hide the word contest. Grant, as in grant us O Lord these thy gifts, a totally helpless situation.

What, indeed, is a story writer’s place on this earth, or this nation at least?

I picked up my undie, locked myself out, on this terrace, congregating here with the birds of the walled-in garden with the high hollow-block walls, the garden maintained by a botany student (male) who visits it once, twice a week. No, I didn’t fuck him, in case you have a mind to ask.

The truth. I love William. He loves me. That’s our story, just another love affair like the many love affair stories movie fans love to watch but hate to experience, especially when you’re the wife.

Or, in this case, especially when you’re the other girl. I know what his sulking is really all about, do you think I don't? He fucking misses his fucking wife and son. I don’t blame him, . . . I’ll miss him myself if he ever decides to go after his wife and his wife takes him back. . . .

He said he’s tired of resorting to fiction under the guise of someone interested in characters, personalities, social relationships, psychologies, or otherwise communal systems, sociological themes, ramifications of economic systems on a people in a zone.

He says, "I wonder if I can avoid what fictionists are really doing, which is try to create stories that would be interesting."

I am his psychiatrist-of-sorts, fucking him because it’s his disease to constantly fuck helpless characters like me, and staying here so he can be fucking cured of this disease. An inverted form of Zen Buddhism this is, immersing oneself in something interesting so you'll get bored with it

Outside here, inside this garden, inside these high hollow-block walls, outside with the birds, I go back to my folder and write this. Finish this. My final note to a sad life as a fan.