beektur: mikishots

The Secret Real Man

Looking at the picture of Nick Carbo in both his El Grupo McDonald's (Tia Chucha Press, 1995) and his new collection of poems, Secret Asian Man (Tia Chucha, 2000), it is not difficult to imagine this guy eating in/out with his friends, an array of victuals spread on a long table; his boyish grin breaking into roaring laughter, a glass – or a bottle – of wine constantly passed from his hands to the other diners. Nick Carbo looks big, but not in the menacing, later-day Orson Welles sense of the word. He's more like your jolly kapitbahay, the big boy who sits on the front steps every afternoon, giggling, watching his shirtless barkada whistle at passing girls or taunt the barefooted magbobote.

Then one reads Carbo, and one imagines him with yet another group of friends; okay, with the same shirtless barkada, in some dark, loud beerhouse, or your kapitbahay's backyard. Beer bottles piling up the table, the grease of sisig and chicharon bulaklak making the smoky air even muggier. He is not the rowdy one in the group, even with his tales of pubic hair and Charlie Balakubak. He is more like your artiste, the aliw, the asar-talo, who draws the punches for laughter but also punches the mirth with wisdom in unexpected places, at unexpected times, halting the whole group with silent rumination. Such, at least, are his poems, and how flippant they are with both the sacred images of the past and the sanctified icons of our times. Such, at least, are his characters, whether they swim across the Hudson River, or sit silently in an East Village movie house; whether they stumble in the darkness of Hobbit House or in the brightness of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Carbo's poems are about a world so familiar it alienates us to itself by our sheer intimate knowledge of it. Consider these lines: Ang Tunay na Lalaki is sure his mother has arranged/ for a novena for the next six months at their church./ He can't bear to think of the whole town including/ him in their prayers – "Please Holy Mother help/ Lalaki find a good American wife." Amusing. As any Pinoy knows, behind every asinine joke of Dolphy or your next-door tambay is a reality that may not be exactly grounded on bitterness and rage but is nevertheless bitter, and only waiting for a spark to start an explosion.

Ang Tunay na Lalaki, Carbo explains, is the shirtless, muscled character in television commercials for a local brand of hard liquor during the 70s and 80s. He is "The Real Man", perhaps the Vic Vargas/Lito Lapid hybrid that reserves no guts to bare his chest and conviction. He may be the quintessential Pinoy, the loko, the astig, the man whom everybody in the baranggay knows.

Now, however, Ang Tunay na Lalaki is the Secret Asian Man, transplanted to the United States, still the loko and the astig, but no longer the person everybody in the neighborhood knows. He no longer exudes the self-assurance with which he may slash the eskinita he passes to hushed tension. Now he wears black Doc Martens boots — not to secrete virulent impression, but "because slippers/ would expose his provinciano feet/ to the snow." His stance is no longer a matter of instance but of necessity, his acts no longer efforts to reinforce an identity, but a string of attempts to (re)discover one. Unfortunately, as Carbo will show us, it is a process of (re)discovery that doesn't guarantee any clear-cut resolution.

Back home, Ang Tunay na Lalaki was a commercial model. He had a maid that does his laundry. In New York, he attends AA meetings and lives a "life/ without the Filipino bottle,// without the star fruit boogie,/ without the bomba films."

Who is Ang Tunay na Lalaki, then? Underneath his Doc Martens, this question clings to Ang Tunay na Lalaki like a second skin. Is he what he thinks, what he speaks, what he tastes? Ang Tunay na Lalaki "thinks/ of the taste of fried garlic, of anise seeds,/ of rambutan fruit, of broiled tuna – // none comes close to what a man/ would taste like in his mind. He reaches/ underneath his shirt and sweater to scratch// his left armpit. He smells his fingers/ and thinks, this is what a Filipino man/ must taste like to American women." Indeed, it may finally be this smell and taste of sweat that will tell us who Ang Tunay na Lalaki is; this essence secreted by the body he tries to make a secret under Valentino tie, Armani jacket and pants, and Polo boxer shorts.

Interestingly, the secret is also a mystery, from the time Ang Tunay na Lalaki changes his name to the time he alters his entire identity. In between these two events, the book follows his adventures as he conceals, reveals, dismembers, questions, and then tries to answer himself. As a result, we have a poem within a poem, a story within a story within a poem, a writer within his poem.

One can accuse Carbo of overdoing the frenzy in this new collection, but it is exactly the absurdity of the circumstances in the book – as well as the absurdity of the book itself – that will pull the reader back to the callousness of reality. The same, of course, cannot be said for its inverse. Often, we have to resort to the imagined to make sense of what is the actual, for the real cannot always rationalize for the fictional. However, Carbo traverses these boundaries with such facility that the boundaries hardly matter, if they are at all apparent or necessary.

Such can also be said about the Pinoy humor, and its distinct irony. It may be oceans apart from British wit or American sarcasm, but it contains a peculiarly scathing acrimony. Without resorting to either the polemics of theories or saccharine sentimentality, Carbo presents to us a mishmash of scenes that can be read as experiences to enjoy, more than morals to enlighten.

In this collection, gone are the traces of strained nostalgia – or guilt — of El Grupo McDonald's. What we have instead is an iconoclast confronting the images that has for a long time dictated the terms that defined him. These are not exclusively American images. We do not merely have a dissection of the East-West dichotomy of laundromats and lavandera, of Wonder Woman and aswang; here, we are confronted with the whole spectrum of symbols that we must both wear, and be stripped of for a complete definition of an identity. Whose identity? The poems may be read as explorations of Filipinos transplanted to America – the ultimate melting pot of images and identities – but it is likewise an exploration of any Filipino, even those whose transplantation to the States is compelling, if not complete, without leaving the Philippines. Who/What is a Filipino now? Who/What is it to be a Filipino in the United States? Who/What is the Filipino American?

When Ang Tunay na Lalaki meets Barbie in New York, she informs him that she was made in the Philippines and tells him he looks like he was made there, too. 'He responds/ just to humor himself, "Where, at the Subic Bay/ manufacturing plants? Did you enjoy/ being made by exploited laborers?" Is this a confrontation of the exploited and the exploiter? Maybe, but try explaining that to the Pinoys in the Philippines – or in the States – whose proclivity for American products (that are made in the Philippines?) are as big as their condescension for anything Philippine-made. Who, then, is the exploited, and who is the exploiter? Is this confrontation still valid?

So, as we chase Ang Tunay na Lalaki through 29 poems, he also chases his definition. He begins with introspection, the inevitable nostalgia. Then, he fends for himself, seeks museums, movie houses, and workshops for clues. In the last six poems, he assumes an entirely new personality, or a jumble of personalities. His is suddenly a personality that is a secret not so much due to its invisibility but to its difficulty in being singled out. Who is Ang Tunay na Lalaki now? "He could be Chinese, Nepalese,/ Cambodian, Timorese, Laotian,/ Indonesian, Burmese, or Thai//?He could be Korean, Japanese,/ Singaporean, Malaysian, Tibetan,/ Vietnamese, or from Brunei." Is this simply confusion over identity, or is this confusion the identity? Even while making you smile, Carbo does not make it easy.

What appears easy, though, is how Carbo continues to employ his own vocabulary to define the world of Lalaki, a world which is as cerebral as it is celebratory. His employment of textual images reinforces the visual images he wants us to feel. The collection contains a medical report, a resume, a chatroom transcript, dictionary entries and lots of italics, bold letters and strike-throughs. And as with El Grupo McDonald's ("Estas maravillosa!/ Have you been on a diet, mujer?/ How are the children y el esposo?"), Carbo remains a delight with his disjointed syntax ("Kumusta! Pare, long time/ no see, at, hoy, you're pogi as eber.")

The last poem has Carbo about to attend Lalaki's wedding reception. He confessed he wanted to give Lalaki and his wife a good life. We do not know if that happened, or if it will in the future. In the end, it may not matter. It may not even matter to know who Lalaki really is. Is he Carbo? Is he Orpheus? Is he you? Maybe what matters is that we had a great ride in this process of (re)discovery, a great tale from a great storyteller. Maybe what matters is that we continue asking. So, bring in more beer, bring out the sisig. Let Carbo tell more tales. And yes, let him bring along Lalaki, "American but with a Filipino flare."

(This piece appears in www.getasia.com.ph)