A short profile

He walks out of glass doors, combing the crowded atrium for his friends, his left hand clutching the strap of his Lego knapsack, his other hand scratching the back of his head. Every time he comes from class, he gives an impression of someone perpetually in awe, this unmistakable look of wonder and naïveté on his face. Yes, he looks like someone you immediately want to punch in the face. In is rubber sneakers, he walks as if he’s impersonating a penguin, or a giddy dodo bird resurrected from extinction, flashing his teeth at the people he passes by. But when he’s down, as what I have been told, he’ll maintain a stiff face for the rest of the day, the confident spoken English he’s known for will be gone—when in a bad mood, he tends to go monosyllabic.

“Are you okay,” asks a friend.

“Yeah,” he replies, failing to fake a smile.

“Why the face?”

“Hungry.”

“Want to eat at the canteen?”

“No.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

“Must go home.”

“Are you ill?”

“Just tired.”

Everyone who knows him believes he’s a smart person, these acquaintances conceding that his intellect is a cut above theirs. Two years ago when I first met him, I also thought that I was in the presence of someone smart. But that sort of dwindled when I saw him speak at the launching of the college literary journal; he introduced a latest addition to the Kombuyahan genus, a small troupe of guitarists that call themselves kwerdas. As it was the launching of a literary journal, I didn’t particularly expect them to play hair-raising pieces such as “More Than Words.” To make things more interesting…

“I believe that I have the fire in me,” the young string instrumentalist announced in a room full of hungry people.

“Sir Joey and I talked about the fire. And I believe in the fire.”

Someone in the audience cringed in his seat. It wasn’t me.

One probably perplexing thing about him: most of his friends are girls. Not just chair-hogging know-it-alls in the library, but pretty, terrific-smelling girls that a fratman would fantasize about. Some might call him lucky: he doesn’t even have to buy them lunch or treat them to a scary movie at SM. They flock around him, a congregation of attractive and preppy teenagers ready to bend over his will. Okay, maybe that was an awful hyperbole. Girls just like being around him, hang out with him, these Communication Arts sophomores popular for their nymphet allure in the campus. Their dashing little Humbert Humbert: him and his big puff of curly hair.

“Do these girls find him attractive?” I ask one of his female friends.

“Nah,” she answers, pouting her lips. “They just like to hang out. He has a good personality and girls like that in a guy.”

“But has he ever made a move on any of his girl friends?”

She chuckles. “Maybe. He used to make porma with one of them. And she didn’t like it.”

“He creeps her out?” I added.

“It’s just that they have issues, okay. They don’t talk with each other anymore.”

One of his friends once confessed that he is a troubled person. He likes staying in the dorm because home doesn’t seem to feel like one anymore. He kills time after classes, avoiding the trip back to his house. He busies himself with kwerdas, spends time with his loyal friends at the dried-up water fountain, talking about the profound and nonsense, whining about college while throwing stones at stray dogs. He strums his guitar for anyone that’s willing to listen, plays a thrilling game of chess with a relative stranger.

For a college guy, he is a quite a creep. He makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand whenever he grins at me on the path walk and say, “Greetings.”

When I see him, the first thing that comes to my find is fruitcake; he simply reminds me of one. Tart and spongy. Someone once referred to him as Sponge Bob, the famous Nickelodeon character. I frowned upon hearing this and later marveled at the appropriateness of the term. And then I discovered he actually liked being associated with a cartoon sponge. Now whenever we stumble into each other, I wait for him to transmogrify into a giant yellow sponge who sounded like he recently OD’d on Prozac.

The day I approached him, he wore a white Rebisco Cream Sandwich t-shirt that was too large for him, his thick, chunky hair protected by a khaki fisherman’s hat, an acoustic guitar strapped to his back.

“Do you still have class?”

He turned around and I notice a black pen clipped to his shirt’s collar. “Nope. Anything I can do?”

I was about to ask my first question when I got distracted by a yellowing pimple on his jaw.

What I admire about him is that no matter what happens, he ends up endearing. On Deviance Day a year ago, he showed up looking like Dhobie, wearing a brown towel ripped to shreds, his skin smeared with charcoal. No one laughed at him; he did look ridiculous but he held it with pride. He even grabbed the microphone that evening and declared to everyone that he felt so deviant he should win the title. He didn’t. But a girl who wore nothing but a cardboard box did.

What drove him to do it, to act so fearless in front of everyone you’d actually believe in him? No wonder his friends admire him. He could wear a boy scout t-shirt to school and not care. He could look like a hobo, sound like an alien invader from another dimension. He could act like a total freak and he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. In fact, he would gladly do that classic Sponge Bob impression, coax the show’s theme from his reliable guitar and walk away contented. So what’s the big secret? Between you and me, I think it’s “the fire.”

John Bengan