I WENT to school one recent Wednesday in a polo barong—something I don’t normally do, not since I gave up my administrative posts, but which I did anyway since I had a meeting outside of the university earlier that morning.
I like polo barongs; I don’t think there’s a better compromise between formality and informality, or tradition and modernity; the fabric—a sturdy linen, sporting the colorfully descriptive nickname of gusot mayaman—is neither too dainty nor too rough, and the embroidery around the half-open front lends just enough (and take note, boys—just enough, shouldn’t ever be too much) grace to the total effect of the piece. I like to have my barongs stiffened with a spray of starch, perhaps as a throwback to my days as a Catholic school boy, when our shirts were a kind of shining armor, at least until recess; sure, they’ll get creased over the long workday, but even the crinkles contribute to the implicit narrative of a man on the job.
I used to be a shirt-and-tie guy, until my girth got too big for my beltline to stay where it should have—not six inches too high (the man-in-a-barrel look) or too low (the gut-runneth-over look); ties look awful either way, like downward arrows pointing to the scene of the crime. On the other hand, worn over a cotton sando or T-shirt, the polo barong works wonders for the overfed, without marking the wearer as a slouch. It’s the “white” in “white-collar worker,” and wearing one always makes me feel better about working.
But this isn’t really about the polo barong. It’s just a prop in my story, which began with me going off to a meeting in Ortigas that morning, wearing the barong with one of my favorite fountain pens—a big Pelikan M800 with a gorgeous red barrel and a black, gold-trimmed cap—clipped onto the barong’s front flap, right above my heart. This Pelikan had been another of my Holy Grails, tracked down on eBay a couple of years ago and paid for with the noble blood of teaching.
When they feel successful, many businessmen and politicians go out and reward themselves with a Montblanc, which is the only premium pen brand most people know. But let me give you a tip, folks: Montblancs are fine, and there are a couple of them I wouldn’t mind having once I get that $1 million advance for my next novel, but among pen collectors and fanciers, doting on Montblancs suggests that, uhm, you don’t get around much. There are Italian, Japanese, and yes, other German pens to die for, and Hanover-based Pelikan makes some of them. The M800 is nowhere near Pelikan’s grandest, biggest, or most expensive piece, but it’s a lovely illustration of the penmaker’s craft in itself, from the trademark bird emblazoned on its crown to the swirls engraved on the 18K nib.
I know that some of you are squirming in your seats and muttering, “Why doesn’t this jerk of a show-off just use a Bic like the rest of us?” It’s a fair question, and I’ve often wondered about the answer. I’m sure psychologists have all the studies to show how collecting (not just pens, but everything from milkmaid figurines to grandfather clocks) can be a pathological addiction; I just think of it as my chosen quirk, my kaartehan, a shortcut to looking and sounding interesting for someone who won’t ever be mistaken for George Clooney or Brad Pitt. It doesn’t take a psychologist to establish the connection between a pen and, well, you figure out its male counterpart, which probably explains why, in the pen-collecting fraternity, bigger is generally better, with pens the size of Cavendish bananas granting their holders top-gorilla status.
But back to my tale of terror. I rushed back to Diliman from Ortigas for a thesis defense, in the course of which I took out and uncapped my Pelikan to make some notes and doodles in the margins of the thesis (lest I be accused of inattention). I remember thinking (make that, narcissistically gloating), “What a wonderful pen this is, what a great bargain this was, oh look at the size of that nib, see how that line fades from black to blue!” The thesis defense over, I went to the UPICW office to make some inquiries, then entered my own cubbyhole to write a note, with a pencil I fished out of a can. Then home I went, relieved to have completed another day. I began unbuttoning my polo barong—then stopped cold as I realized that, horror of horrors, the Pelikan’s cap was still hanging there, but the barrel—the rest of the pen—was gone. It had come unscrewed, somewhere on campus within the past half hour, and I had no idea where.
Here, insert all the clichés you can imagine: “The blood drained out of my head.” “A knot formed in my stomach.” “My throat felt dry as sandpaper.” You know how it is when you’ve suddenly lost something you weren’t supposed to; remember when, as a kid, you lost that P100 bill your Dad gave you to buy a textbook with, or the P1,000 that was supposed to pay for your tuition? Or—to use what my students, in a quick classroom survey, rated as their foremost fear, in this age of tsunamis, megascams, and desaparecidos—have you ever lost your cellphone?
That’s what it felt like: a solid hit in the gut, and instantly my defense mechanisms swung into action, seeking to protect me from further pain. A philosopher’s voice (sounding a lot like James Earl Jones) whispered in my ear: “We are not to cling to the things of this world, which have been tainted or corrupted by evil…. “ I listened for about five seconds, decided that this guru had been badly misinformed, then dashed out the door to my car, and broke all the speed limits around campus to get back to the office and literally retrace my steps, hoping to find, on some gentle floor, the Pelikan’s pristine barrel, unscathed from its precipitous fall.
On that frantic drive back, I thought of how stupid I had been—vanity of vanities!—to have even thought of bringing such a treasure along, like a toy to show off in elementary school. I remembered how I had lost many other pens, but never learned. One of them, a century-old filigree pen, was a Christmas gift from a friend, tucked into a box with a book; I kept the book and threw away the box; another was a 1925 Parker Duofold, dropped on a bus in Milwaukee; the sickening list goes on. That should’ve stopped me from trotting these little masterpieces out, but I have this strange notion that nice things are meant to be used; so I put my best pens through a set rotation, and now I was paying for my stubbornness.
Despite my most diligent efforts, the Pelikan was nowhere to be found. I crouched on all fours in the faculty parking lot, thinking that it had rolled to the safety of a gutter, or—ghastly thought—had been crushed beneath the wheel of a prosperous professor’s Volvo; I would’ve scavenged the remains and given them a proper Viking send-off, relieved, at least, from the horrifying prospect that my wayward pen was out there, being employed by some mindless undergraduate as an icepick. Better to know it was dead than forever lost, I said, so I could grieve—and start looking for a new one. I interviewed the security guards, and put out an APB; but no one had seen anything—no one ever does, as I’d learned from CSI.
I drove back home, dejected and desultory; I thought of printing out and posting “Wanted” pictures, like our friends Boojie and Chingbee did, when their cat Minggoy decided to take a stroll around the village. Again the endorphins came flooding through me, blocking out the pain, not too successfully. I thought of all the times that Pelikan and I had spent together, all the notes it had imprinted onto my Moleskine, the reassuring gravity of its presence in my pocket. The pocketless barong, I realized, was no place for a fine pen; today would be the last time I would make that mistake.
In a final gesture of surrender and acceptance, I stepped into the bathroom to undress, perhaps to ritually remove any reminder of the sorry outcome of that day. My polo barong was all messed up and stained with sweat; I began thinking how different things would have been had I worn a long-sleeved shirt. What if this, what if that…. In front of the mirror, I pulled the barong over my head—then saw a blue-black stain blooming across my undershirt, just below my belly button. Instinctively I clutched the odd-colored wound—and touched a familiar shape. Indeed the barrel had fallen off its cap, but it had been caught and trapped in the sando beneath my gut and above my belt! I’d been running around like a headless chicken for nearly an hour, and the thing was right there all along.
I jumped for joy and kissed the pen, making all sorts of fervent pledges never to stick it into a barong again. “Don’t do that again! I don’t ever want to lose you like that!” At least that’s what I said to the Pelikan—but not to the Montblanc, the Parker, nor the Faber-Castell.
READER EMMANUEL alerted me to this Essay Writing Competition, which seems worth a try if you’re between 18 and 25 and have a fly of an idea buzzing around your head. Check this out: “The World Bank, the Cities Alliance, and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs invite youth aged 18-25 from all countries of the world to participate in the International Essay Competition 2008: ‘WANTED: Your Practical Ideas—What can you do to shape the city of your dreams?’ Essays can be submitted online in English, French, Spanish, Arabic or Portuguese until March 23, 2008. Awards: 5000 USD and 1000 USD plus a free trip to the awarding ceremonies in South Africa for the finalists. For more information and submissions, visit www.essaycompetition.org.