15th Congress - House Bill 4244 (full text, final consolidated RH Bill)

SECTION 1. Title

This Act shall be known as the "The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011."

SECTION 2. Declaration of Policy

The State recognises and guarantees the exercise of the universal basic human right to reproductive health by all persons, particularly of parents, couples and women, consistent with their religious convictions, cultural beliefs and the demands of responsible parenthood. Toward this end, there shall be no discrimination against any person on grounds of sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities, political affiliation and ethnicity.
Moreover, the State recognises and guarantees the promotion of gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment as a health and human rights concern. The advancement and protection of women’s human rights shall be central to the efforts of the State to address reproductive health care. As a distinct but inseparable measure to the guarantee of women’s rights, the State recognises and guarantees the promotion of the welfare and rights of children.

The State likewise guarantees universal access to medically-safe, legal, affordable, effective and quality reproductive health care services, methods, devices, supplies and relevant information and education thereon even as it prioritises the needs of women and children, amongst other underprivileged sectors.

The State shall eradicate discriminatory practices, laws and policies that infringe on a person’s exercise of reproductive health rights.

SECTION 3. Guiding Principles

The following principles constitute the framework upon which this Act is anchored:
1. Freedom of choice, which is central to the exercise of right, must be fully guaranteed by the State;
2. Respect for, protection and fulfilment of reproductive health and rights seek to promote the rights and welfare of couples, adult individuals, women and adolescents;
3. Since human resource is amongst the principal asset of the country, maternal health, safe delivery of healthy children and their full human development and responsible parenting must be ensured through effective reproductive health care;
4. The provision of medically safe, legal, accessible, affordable and effective reproductive health care services and supplies is essential in the promotion of people’s right to health, especially of the poor and marginalised;
5. The State shall promote, without bias, all effective natural and modern methods of family planning that are medically safe and legal;
6. The State shall promote programmes that: (1) enable couples, individuals and women to have the number and spacing of children and reproductive spacing they desire with due consideration to the health of women and resources available to them; (2) achieve equitable allocation and utilisation of resources; (3) ensure effective partnership amongst the national government, local government units and the private sector in the design, implementation, coordination, integration, monitoring and evaluation of people-centred programmes to enhance quality of life and environmental protection; (4) conduct studies to analyse demographic trends towards sustainable human development and (5) conduct scientific studies to determine safety and efficacy of alternative medicines and methods for reproductive health care development;
7. The provision of reproductive health information, care and supplies shall be the joint responsibility of the National Government and the Local Government Units (LGUs);
8. Active participation by non-government, women’s, people’s, civil society organisations and communities is crucial to ensure that reproductive health and population and development policies, plans, and programmes will address the priority needs of the poor, especially women;
9. While this Act recognises that abortion is illegal and punishable by law, the government shall ensure that all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner;
10. There shall be no demographic or population targets and the mitigation of the population growth rate is incidental to the promotion of reproductive health and sustainable human development;
11. Gender equality and women empowerment are central elements of reproductive health and population and development;
12. The limited resources of the country cannot be suffered to be spread so thinly to service a burgeoning multitude making allocations grossly inadequate and effectively meaningless;
13. Development is a multi-faceted process that calls for the coordination and integration of policies, plans, programmes and projects that seek to uplift the quality of life of the people, more particularly the poor, the needy and the marginalised; and
14. That a comprehensive reproductive health programme addresses the needs of people throughout their life cycle.

SECTION 4. Definition of Terms

For the purposes of this Act, the following terms shall be defined as follows:

Adolescence refers to the period of physical and physiological development of an individual from the onset of puberty to complete growth and maturity which usually begins between eleven (11) to thirteen (13) years and terminating at eighteen (18) to twenty (20) years of age;

Adolescent Sexuality refers to, amongst others, the reproductive system, gender identity, values and beliefs, emotions, relationships and sexual behavior at adolescence;

AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) refers to a condition characterised by a combination of signs and symptoms, caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which attacks and weakens the body’s immune system, making the afflicted individual susceptible to other life-threatening infections;

Anti-Retroviral Medicines (ARVs) refer to medications for the treatment of infection by retroviruses, primarily HIV;

Basic Emergency Obstetric Care refers to lifesaving services for maternal complications being provided by a health facility or professional, which must include the following six signal functions: administration of parenteral antibiotics; administration of parenteral oxytocic drugs; administration of parenteral anticonvulsants for pre-eclampsia and eclampsia; manual removal of placenta; removal of retained products; and assisted vaginal delivery;

Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Care refers to basic emergency obstetric care including deliveries by surgical procedure (caesarian section) and blood transfusion;

Employer refers to any natural or juridical person who hires the services of a worker. The term shall not include any labour organisation or any of its officers or agents except when acting as an employer;

Family Planning refers to a programme which enables couples, individuals and women to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children, acquire relevant information on reproductive health care, services and supplies and have access to a full range of safe, legal, affordable, effective natural and modern methods of limiting and spacing pregnancy;

Gender Equality refers to the absence of discrimination on the basis of a person’s sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in opportunities, allocation of resources or benefits and access to services;

Gender Equity refers to fairness and justice in the distribution of benefits and responsibilities between women and men, and often requires women-specific projects and programmes to end existing inequalities;

Healthcare Service Provider refers to (1) health care institution, which is duly licensed and accredited and devoted primarily to the maintenance and operation of facilities for health promotion, disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care of individuals suffering from illness, disease, injury, disability or deformity, or in need of obstetrical or other medical and nursing care; (2) a health care professional, who is a doctor of medicine, a nurse, or a midwife; (3) public health worker engaged in the delivery of health care services; and (4) barangay health worker who has undergone training programmes under any accredited government and non-government organisation and who voluntarily renders primarily health care services in the community after having been accredited to function as such by the local health board in accordance with the guidelines promulgated by the Department of Health (DOH);

HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) refers to the virus which causes AIDS;

Male Responsibility refers to the involvement, commitment, accountability, and responsibility of males in relation to women in all areas of sexual and reproductive health as well as the protection and promotion of reproductive health concerns specific to men;

Maternal Death Review refers to a qualitative and in-depth study of the causes of maternal death with the primary purpose of preventing future deaths through changes or additions to programmes, plans and policies;
Modern Methods of Family Planning refer to safe, effective and legal methods, whether the natural, or the artificial that are registered with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the DOH, to prevent pregnancy;
People Living with HIV (PLWH) refer to individuals who have been tested and found to be infected with HIV;

Poor refers to members of households identified as poor through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) or any subsequent system used by the national government in identifying the poor.

Population and Development refers to a programme that aims to: (1) help couples and parents achieve their desired family size; (2) improve reproductive health of individuals by addressing reproductive health problems; (3) contribute to decreased maternal and infant mortality rates and early child mortality; (4) reduce incidence of teenage pregnancy; and (5) recognise the linkage between population and sustainable human development;

Reproductive Health refers to the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes;

Reproductive Health Care refers to the access to a full range of methods, facilities, services and supplies that contribute to reproductive health and well-being by preventing and solving reproductive health-related problems. It also includes sexual health, the purpose of which is the enhancement of life and personal relations. The elements of reproductive health care include the following:
(a) family planning information and services;
(b) maternal, infant and child health and nutrition, including breastfeeding;
(c) proscription of abortion and management of abortion complications;
(d) adolescent and youth reproductive health;
(e) prevention and management of reproductive tract infections (RTIs), HIV and AIDS and other sexually transmittable infections (STIs);
(f) elimination of violence against women;
(g) education and counseling on sexuality and reproductive health;
(h) treatment of breast and reproductive tract cancers and other gynecological conditions and disorders;
(i) male responsibility and participation in reproductive health;
(j) prevention and treatment of infertility and sexual dysfunction;
(k) reproductive health education for the adolescents; and
(l) mental health aspect of reproductive health care.

Reproductive Health Care Programme refers to the systematic and integrated provision of reproductive health care to all citisens especially the poor, marginalised and those in vulnerable and crisis situations;
Reproductive Health Rights refer to the rights of couples, individuals and women to decide freely and responsibly whether or not to have children; to determine the number, spacing and timing of their children; to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence; to have relevant information; and to attain the highest condition of sexual and reproductive health;

Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education refers to a lifelong learning process of providing and acquiring complete, accurate and relevant information and education on reproductive health and sexuality through life skills education and other approaches;

Reproductive Tract Infection (RTI) refers to sexually transmitted infections, and other types of infections affecting the reproductive system;

Responsible Parenthood refers to the will, ability and commitment of parents to adequately respond to the needs and aspirations of the family and children by responsibly and freely exercising their reproductive health rights;

Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) refers to any infection that may be acquired or passed on through sexual contact;

Skilled Attendant refers to an accredited health professional, such as midwife, doctor or nurse, who has been educated and trained in the skills needed to manage normal (uncomplicated) pregnancies, childbirth and the immediate postnatal period, and in the identification, management and referral of complications in women and newborns, to exclude traditional birth attendant or midwife (hilot), whether trained or not;

Skilled Birth Attendance refers to childbirth managed by a skilled attendant including the enabling conditions of necessary equipment and support of a functioning health system, and the transport and referral facilities for emergency obstetric care; and

Sustainable Human Development refers to bringing people, particularly the poor and vulnerable, to the center of development process, the central purpose of which is the creation of an enabling environment in which all can enjoy long, healthy and productive lives, and done in a manner that promotes their rights and protects the life opportunities of future generations and the natural ecosystem on which all life depends.

SECTION 5. Midwives for Skilled Attendance

The Local Government Units (LGUs) with the assistance of the DOH, shall employ an adequate number of midwives through regular employment or service contracting, subject to the provisions of the Local Government Code, to achieve a minimum ratio of one (1) fulltime skilled birth attendant for every one hundred fifty (150) deliveries per year, to be based on the annual number of actual deliveries or live births for the past two (2) years; Provided, That people in geographically isolated and depressed areas shall be provided the same level of access.

SECTION 6. Emergency Obstetric Care

Each province and city, with the assistance of the DOH, shall establish or upgrade hospitals with adequate and qualified personnel, equipment and supplies to be able to provide emergency obstetric and neonatal care. For every 500,000 population, there shall be at least one (1) hospital with comprehensive emergency obstetric and neonatal care and four (4) hospitals or other health facilities with basic emergency obstetric and neonatal care; Provided, That people in geographically isolated and depressed areas shall be provided the same level of access.

SECTION 7. Access to Family Planning

All accredited health facilities shall provide a full range of modern family planning methods, except in specialty hospitals which may render such services on an optional basis. For poor patients, such services shall be fully covered by the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) and/or government financial assistance on a no balance billing.

After the use of any PhilHealth benefit involving childbirth and all other pregnancy-related services, if the beneficiary wishes to space or prevent her next pregnancy, PhilHealth shall pay for the full cost of family planning.

SECTION 8. Maternal and Newborn Health Care in Crisis Situations

The LGUs and the DOH shall ensure that a Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for reproductive health, including maternal and neonatal health care kits and services as defined by the DOH, will be given proper attention in crisis situations such as disasters and humanitarian crises. MISP shall become part of all responses by national agencies at the onset of crisis and emergencies.

Temporary facilities such as evacuation centers and refugee camps shall be equipped to respond to the special needs in the following situations: normal and complicated deliveries, pregnancy complications, miscarriage and post-abortion complications, spread of HIV/AIDS and STIs, and sexual and gender-based violence.

SECTION 9. Maternal Death Review

All LGUs, national and local government hospitals, and other public health units shall conduct annual maternal death review in accordance with the guidelines set by the DOH.

SECTION 10. Family Planning Supplies as Essential Medicines

Products and supplies for modern family planning methods shall be part of the National Drug Formulary and the same shall be included in the regular purchase of essential medicines and supplies of all national and local hospitals and other government health units.

SECTION 11. Procurement and Distribution of Family Planning Supplies

The DOH shall spearhead the efficient procurement, distribution to LGUs and usage-monitoring of family planning supplies for the whole country. The DOH shall coordinate with all appropriate LGUs to plan and implement this procurement and distribution programme. The supply and budget allotment shall be based on, amongst others, the current levels and projections of the following:

(a) number of women of reproductive age and couples who want to space or limit their children;
(b) contraceptive prevalence rate, by type of method used; and
(c) cost of family planning supplies.

SECTION 12. Integration of Responsible Parenthood and Family Planning Component in Anti-Poverty Programmes

A multi-dimensional approach shall be adopted in the implementation of policies and programmes to fight poverty. Towards this end, the DOH shall endeavor to integrate a responsible parenthood and family planning component into all antipoverty and other sustainable human development programmes of government, with corresponding fund support. The DOH shall provide such programmes technical support, including capacity-building and monitoring.

SECTION 13. Roles of Local Government in Family Planning Programmes

The LGUs shall ensure that poor families receive preferential access to services, commodities and programmes for family planning. The role of Population Officers at municipal, city and barangay levels in the family planning effort shall be strengthened. The Barangay Health Workers and volunteers shall be capacitated to give priority to family planning work.

SECTION 14. Benefits for Serious and Life-Threatening Reproductive Health Conditions

All serious and life threatening reproductive health conditions such as HIV and AIDS, breast and reproductive tract cancers, obstetric complications, menopausal and post-menopausal related conditions shall be given the maximum benefits as provided by PhilHealth programmes.

SECTION 15. Mobile Health Care Service

Each Congressional District may be provided with at least one (1) Mobile Health Care Service (MHCS) in the form of a van or other means of transportation appropriate to coastal or mountainous areas. The MHCS shall deliver health care supplies and services to constituents, more particularly to the poor and needy, and shall be used to disseminate knowledge and information on reproductive health. The purchase of the MHCS may be funded from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) of each congressional district. The operation and maintenance of the MHCS shall be operated by skilled health providers and adequately equipped with a wide range of reproductive health care materials and information dissemination devices and equipment, the latter including, but not limited to, a television set for audiovisual presentations. All MHCS shall be operated by a focal city or municipality within a congressional district.

SECTION 16. Mandatory Age-Appropriate Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education

Age-appropriate Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education shall be taught by adequately trained teachers in formal and non-formal educational system starting from Grade Five up to Fourth Year High School using life skills and other approaches. The Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education shall commence at the start of the school year immediately following one (1) year from the effectivity of this Act to allow the training of concerned teachers. The Department of Education (DepEd), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the DSWD, and the DOH shall formulate the Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education curriculum. Such curriculum shall be common to both public and private schools, out of school youth, and enrollees in the Alternative Learning System (ALS) based on, but not limited to, the psychosocial and the physical well-being, the demography and reproductive health, and the legal aspects of reproductive health.

Age-appropriate Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education shall be integrated in all relevant subjects and shall include, but not limited to, the following topics:

(a) Values formation;
(b) Knowledge and skills in self protection against discrimination, sexual violence and abuse, and teen pregnancy;
(c) Physical, social and emotional changes in adolescents;
(d) Children’s and women’s rights;
(e) Fertility awareness;
(f) STI, HIV and AIDS;
(g) Population and development;
(h) Responsible relationship;
(i) Family planning methods;
(j) Proscription and hazards of abortion;
(k) Gender and development; and
(l) Responsible parenthood.

The DepEd, CHED, DSWD, TESDA and DOH shall provide concerned parents with adequate and relevant scientific materials on the age-appropriate topics and manner of teaching Reproductive Health and Sexuality Education to their children.

SECTION 17. Additional Duty of the Local Population Officer

Each Local Population Officer of every city and municipality shall furnish free instructions and information on responsible parenthood, family planning, breastfeeding, infant nutrition and other relevant aspects of this Act to all applicants for marriage license. In the absence of a local Population Officer, a Family Planning Officer under the Local Health Office shall discharge the additional duty of the Population Officer.

SECTION 18. Certificate of Compliance

No marriage license shall be issued by the Local Civil Registrar unless the applicants present a Certificate of Compliance issued for free by the local Family Planning Office certifying that they had duly received adequate instructions and information on responsible parenthood, family planning, breastfeeding and infant nutrition.

SECTION 19. Capability Building of Barangay Health Workers

Barangay Health Workers and other community-based health workers shall undergo training on the promotion of reproductive health and shall receive at least 10% increase in honouraria, upon successful completion of training.

SECTION 20. Ideal Family Size

The State shall assist couples, parents and individuals to achieve their desired family size within the context of responsible parenthood for sustainable development and encourage them to have two children as the ideal family size. Attaining the ideal family size is neither mandatory nor compulsory. No punitive action shall be imposed on parents having more than two children.

SECTION 21. Employers’ Responsibilities

The Department of Labour and Employment (DOLE) shall ensure that employers respect the reproductive rights of workers. Consistent with the intent of Article 134 of the Labour Code, employers with more than two hundred (200) employees shall provide reproductive health services to all employees in their own respective health facilities. Those with less than two hundred (200) workers shall enter into partnerships with hospitals, health facilities, or health professionals in their areas for the delivery of reproductive health services.
Employers shall furnish in writing the following information to all employees and applicants:

(a) The medical and health benefits which workers are entitled to, including maternity and paternity leave benefits and the availability of family planning services;
(b) The reproductive health hazards associated with work, including hazards that may affect their reproductive functions especially pregnant women; and
(c) The availability of health facilities for workers.

Employers are obliged to monitor pregnant working employees amongst their workforce and ensure that they are provided paid half-day prenatal medical leaves for each month of the pregnancy period that the pregnant employee is employed in their company or organization. These paid prenatal medical leaves shall be reimbursable from the Social Security System (SSS) or the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), as the case may be.

SECTION 22. Pro Bono Services for Indigent Women

Private and non-government reproductive health care service providers, including but not limited to gynecologists and obstetricians, are mandated to provide at least forty-eight (48) hours annually of reproductive health services, ranging from providing information and education to rendering medical services free of charge to indigent and low income patients, especially to pregnant adolescents. These forty-eight (48) hours annual pro bono services shall be included as pre-requisite in the accreditation under the PhilHealth.

SECTION 23. Sexual And Reproductive Health Programmes For Persons With Disabilities (PWDs)

The cities and municipalities must ensure that barriers to reproductive health services for PWDs are obliterated by the following:

(a) providing physical access, and resolving transportation and proximity issues to clinics, hospitals and places where public health education is provided, contraceptives are sold or distributed or other places where reproductive health services are provided;
(b) adapting examination tables and other laboratory procedures to the needs and conditions of persons with disabilities;
(c) increasing access to information and communication materials on sexual and reproductive health in braille, large print, simple language, and pictures;
(d) providing continuing education and inclusion rights of persons with disabilities amongst health-care providers; and
(e) undertaking activities to raise awareness and address misconceptions amongst the general public on the stigma and their lack of knowledge on the sexual and reproductive health needs and rights of persons with disabilities.

SECTION 24. Right to Reproductive Health Care Information

The government shall guarantee the right of any person to provide or receive non-fraudulent information about the availability of reproductive health care services, including family planning, and prenatal care.
The DOH and the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) shall initiate and sustain a heightened nationwide multimedia campaign to raise the level of public awareness of the protection and promotion of reproductive health and rights including family planning and population and development.

SECTION 25. Implementing Mechanisms

Pursuant to the herein declared policy, the DOH and the Local Health Units in cities and municipalities shall serve as the lead agencies for the implementation of this Act and shall integrate in their regular operations the following functions:

(a) Ensure full and efficient implementation of the Reproductive Health Care Programme;
(b) Ensure people’s access to medically safe, legal, effective, quality and affordable reproductive health supplies and services;
(c) Ensure that reproductive health services are delivered with a full range of supplies, facilities and equipment and that healthcare service providers are adequately trained for such reproductive health care delivery;
(d) Take active steps to expand the coverage of the National Health Insurance Programme (NHIP), especially amongst poor and marginalised women, to include the full range of reproductive health services and supplies as health insurance benefits;
(e) Strengthen the capacities of health regulatory agencies to ensure safe, legal, effective, quality, accessible and affordable reproductive health services and commodities with the concurrent strengthening and enforcement of regulatory mandates and mechanisms;
(f) Promulgate a set of minimum reproductive health standards for public health facilities, which shall be included in the criteria for accreditation. These minimum reproductive health standards shall provide for the monitoring of pregnant mothers, and a minimum package of reproductive health programmes that shall be available and affordable at all levels of the public health system except in specialty hospitals where such services are provided on optional basis;
(g) Facilitate the involvement and participation of NGOs and the private sector in reproductive health care service delivery and in the production, distribution and delivery of quality reproductive health and family planning supplies and commodities to make them accessible and affordable to ordinary citizens;
(h) Furnish LGUs with appropriate information and resources to keep them updated on current studies and researches relating to responsible parenthood, family planning, breastfeeding and infant nutrition; and
(i) Perform such other functions necessary to attain the purposes of this Act.
The Commission on Population (POPCOM), as an attached agency of DOH, shall serve as the coordinating body in the implementation of this Act and shall have the following functions:
(a) Integrate on a continuing basis the interrelated reproductive health and population development agenda consistent with the herein declared national policy, taking into account regional and local concerns;
(b) Provide the mechanism to ensure active and full participation of the private sector and the citizenry through their organisations in the planning and implementation of reproductive health care and population and development programmes and projects; and
(c) Conduct sustained and effective information drives on sustainable human development and on all methods of family planning to prevent unintended, unplanned and mistimed pregnancies.

SECTION 26. Reporting Requirements

Before the end of April of each year, the DOH shall submit an annual report to the President of the Philippines, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (HOR). The report shall provide a definitive and comprehensive assessment of the implementation of its programmes and those of other government agencies and instrumentalities, civil society and the private sector and recommend appropriate priorities for executive and legislative actions. The report shall be printed and distributed to all national agencies, the LGUs, civil society and the private sector organizations involved in said programmes.
The annual report shall evaluate the content, implementation and impact of all policies related to reproductive health and family planning to ensure that such policies promote, protect and fulfill reproductive health and rights, particularly of parents, couples and women.

SECTION 27. Congressional Oversight Committee (COC)

There is hereby created a Congressional Oversight Committee composed of five (5) members each from the Senate and the HOR. The members from the Senate and the HOR shall be appointed by the Senate President and the Speaker, respectively, based on proportional representation of the parties or coalition therein with at least one (1) member representing the Minority.

The COC shall be headed by the respective Chairs of the Committee on Youth, Women and Family Relations of the Senate and the Committee on Population and Family Relations of the HOR. The Secretariat of the COC shall come from the existing Secretariat personnel of the Senate’ and the HOR’ committees concerned.
The COC shall monitor and ensure the effective implementation of this Act, determine the inherent weakness and loopholes in the law, recommend the necessary remedial legislator or administrative measures and perform such other duties and functions as may be necessary to attain the objectives of this Act.

SECTION 28. Prohibited Acts

The following acts are prohibited:

(a) Any healthcare service provider, whether public or private, who shall:
(1) Knowingly withhold information or restrict the dissemination thereof, or intentionally provide incorrect information regarding programmes and services on reproductive health, including the right to informed choice and access to a full range of legal, medically-safe and effective family planning methods;
(2) Refuse to perform legal and medically-safe reproductive health procedures on any person of legal age on the ground of lack of third party consent or authorization. In case of married persons, the mutual consent of the spouses shall be preferred. However in case of disagreement, the decision of the one undergoing the procedure shall prevail. In the case of abused minors where parents or other family members are the respondent, accused or convicted perpetrators as certified by the proper prosecutorial office or court, no prior parental consent shall be necessary; and
(3) Refuse to extend health care services and information on account of the person’s marital status, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, personal circumstances, or nature of work; Provided, That, the conscientious objection of a healthcare service provider based on his/her ethical or religious beliefs shall be respected; however, the conscientious objector shall immediately refer the person seeking such care and services to another healthcare service provider within the same facility or one which is conveniently accessible who is willing to provide the requisite information and services; Provided, further, That the person is not in an emergency condition or serious case as defined in RA 8344 otherwise known as "An Act Penalizing the Refusal of Hospitals and Medical Clinics to Administer Appropriate Initial Medical Treatment and Support in Emergency and Serious Cases."
(b) Any public official who, personally or through a subordinate, prohibits or restricts the delivery of legal and medically-safe reproductive health care services, including family planning; or forces, coerces or induces any person to use such services.
(c) Any employer or his representative who shall require an employee or applicant, as a condition for employment or continued employment, to undergo sterilization or use or not use any family planning method; neither shall pregnancy be a ground for non-hiring or termination of employment.
(d) Any person who shall falsify a certificate of compliance as required in Section 15 of this Act; and
(e) Any person who maliciously engages in disinformation about the intent or provisions of this Act.

SECTION 29. Penalties

Any violation of this Act or commission of the foregoing prohibited acts shall be penalised by imprisonment ranging from one (1) month to six (6) months or a fine of Ten Thousand (Php 10,000.00) to Fifty Thousand Pesos (Php 50,000.00) or both such fine and imprisonment at the discretion of the competent court; Provided That, if the offender is a public official or employee, he or she shall suffer the accessory penalty of dismissal from the government service and forfeiture of retirement benefits. If the offender is a juridical person, the penalty shall be imposed upon the president or any responsible officer. An offender who is an alien shall, after service of sentence, be deported immediately without further proceedings by the Bureau of Immigration.

SECTION 30. Appropriations

The amounts appropriated in the current annual General Appropriations Act (GAA) for Family Health and Responsible Parenting under the DOH and POPCOM shall be allocated and utilised for the initial implementation of this Act. Such additional sums necessary to implement this Act; provide for the upgrading of facilities necessary to meet Basic Emergency Obstetric Care and Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Care standards; train and deploy skilled health providers; procure family planning supplies and commodities as provided in Sec. 6; and implement other reproductive health services, shall be included in the subsequent GAA.

SECTION 31. Implementing Rules and Regulations

Within sixty (60) days from the effectivity of this Act, the Secretary of the DOH shall formulate and adopt amendments to the existing rules and regulations to carry out the objectives of this Act, in consultation with the Secretaries of the DepED, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), the DOLE, the DSWD, the Director General of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), and the Commissioner of CHED, the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW), and two NGOs or Peoples’ Organizations (POs) for women. Full dissemination of the IRR to the public shall be ensured.

SECTIONS 32-34. Separability Clause, Repealing Clause, Effectivity

SECTION 32. Separability Clause

If any part or provision of this Act is held invalid or unconstitutional, other provisions not affected thereby shall remain in force and effect.

SECTION 33. Repealing Clause

All other laws, decrees, orders, issuances, rules and regulations which are inconsistent with the provisions of this Act are hereby repealed, amended or modified accordingly.

SECTION 34. Effectivity

This Act shall take effect fifteen (15) days after its publication in at least two (2) newspapers of general circulation.

The Death of Professor Wendam

a short story by Roger B Rueda

Myra Wendam, a professor, was killed in a head-on collision between a bus and a taxi outside the university.

Lots of students had a terror of her and her two gay colleagues, Ricky and Aba. They three had a heart of stone. They felt very bitter about their childhood and all that was denied them. They were subtle psychos. With the existence of the three at the college, all students were between the devil and the deep blue sea. So, some students wept for joy when they were told that their professor died.

A lot of students would get short shrift from them even if they fell sick while they were stressed out by being under a lot of pressure and, of course, by their waspish tongues which could hurt. The students found them arrogant and rude. Nobody could believe their pretentiousness but their innocent students, who thought that a diploma in communication arts was gold bullion. The three seemed to show signs of genius. They taught a lot of things, which they themselves didn’t know what these really were. Myra taught advertising, but never had she produced at least one half-decent advertisement. But they kept on believing that their MA’s (or EdD in the case of Aba) were credible evidence for convicting people around them.

***

Two years ago, both Ricky and Aba, who had been extorting money from their students for years, were found slain in an alley a block from a cinema where a lot of gays, who had promiscuous lifestyles, would go. Since then, the place was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the two gay professors.

There seemed no justice in the world as they were slain like that, but justice remained elusive for them and their family. Life just redressed the balance, perhaps.

***

Myra's cremation was a sad affair. Few mourners attended the funeral. All were her family. No students were there to symphatise. Only Ricky's family and his sister, who the rest of the class were sick of watching brown-nose, and Aba's cousin, who would dance attendance on all her professors. They all spent the entire afternoon schmoozing with Myra's family.

***

The death of Myra fuelled speculation that she had, indeed, struck terror into her students and that someone still must have held a grudge against her for doing all the bad things to him, or perhaps, her. The fault lay with her, whose manners were as worse as Ricky’s. But, of course, Ricky was a subtle evil genius.

No one, at first, knew what made the bus and the taxi collide at the crossroads, but after months of investigation the police suspected foul play. They investigated how a crime like that could have occurred. The killer or the mastermind must have borne any grudge against her. Myra died in mysterious circumstances, and there was a possibility that it was murder. For one thing, when the bus driver was in collision with a taxi, one passenger heard the noise of a gun firing at the helm.

The next scene was all a bit sudden. The one killed was not the real driver. The real driver had escaped, and her wife was on TV, weeping buckets and appealing to her husband to show up. After an autopsy was carried out, a week after, the police and the media concluded from the evidence that Myra was murdered.

A year ago, Myra kept herself aloof from what was happening around her. Her insensitivity towards the feelings of her colleagues, who would have a foul day  with her at work, was remarkable. But one of her colleagues noticed that she'd been seeing someone on the quiet. The woman looked strangely familiar, though her colleague knew she'd never met her before.  When the woman and Myra saw her, they gave her a black look, and, as she left the secluded restaurant, she was confronted by the angry women, Myra and her companion,  who tried to block her way. They threatened to kill her unless she did as they asked.  In order to escape threat, she resigned from her job unexpectedly and fled somewhere very far.  Since then, she seemed to have sunk without trace.

Myra’s family were surprised to see her pray. Praying became part of her morning and evening ritual. She was an atheist and what she was doing seemed paradoxical to them. She erected a statue to her god and decided to devote herself to him.  How she became like what she was remained a mystery until her death when, in the fading light, people saw bats flitting about on the street where the bus and the taxi ran into. Then police discovered a bundle of black books whose writings were difficult to decipher and small plastic discs whose information was fully encrypted and couldn’t be accessed. Myra's full name was carved into them. So, the police turned  them over to her family. A week after, her family got a going-over and all the books and discs were stolen. The family questioned the motives, but it remained wrapped in mystery save Myra's only daughter, Alexandria.

Some of her students recalled how Myra had paraded up Commonwealth Avenue, past Tandang Sora Flyover. She looked like some mad old woman in her wide-brimmed buri hat while she was dragging a cart with a statue of her god down to the street, her shoes and socks taken off, she walking barefoot. But when they remembered how she would start to swear at them in class, they would swear like a trooper, too. They loathed having known her in their life. What was very clear in their stories, which they were spreading, was their passionate hatred of her.

Everyone rejoiced at the news of her death. Her colleagues cried as if it was for joy when they heard the accident. She was believed to have died not in the accident but in revenge for what she had done bad in the past.

The news of her death was around for a week, then slid into oblivion.

Silence

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It is like water filling each fissure of stones or earth,
or even the holes of our skin. When it leaves,
only then do we know that it was there
as it leaves a memory of synchronisation
and strangeness
of being verbal, of knowing
that we are not by ourselves
in the midst of this home where the end
is the start and the start is the end,
like a helm spinning round.
We can walk out on through it as it doesn’t bear
all: it is the god of reticence
and surreptitiousness,
it is the god which knows everything, but,
perhaps has silence of itself
whose life ends
when it is broken or vanishes when heard.
It is it when we can only plumb its deepness
or sense or insight,
but through it we only
walk in the unknown and yet only it knows
that the truth is almost by it.
It can change everything, the truth,
maybe, for it is
as if an inconstant mechanism:
it has its form
but tends to be shapeless
as it is what it is, or who it is, I don’t know.
It is at the end of it that we can know the truth of it,
but only then when life doesn’t start or end
but finally admits to what we think of it or what it really is.

Star Apple

a poem by Roger B Rueda

A neighbour observed a man all of eighty
but so full of life
put a star apple seedling
into the ground.
The neighbour asked the old man
‘Do you believe
you can delight in star apples
from that tree?’
A star apple tree
is in fruit about eight summers.
The old man rested
smilingly on his shovel.
He said ‘No, I'm really
beginning
to feel my age.
But all my life I have been
enjoying the smooth and
creamy star apples
but never from a tree
I have put
into the ground before.
I wouldn’t have
had star apples
if others took star apples
with them when they went,
so I mustn't leave bearing
this gift unique
to this soil,’ grinning from ear to ear.

Nostalgia

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It’s like a secret message written in invisible ink.
We’ve been totally deaf to it
since then, no one has ever
heard it, believe me.
We can’t have a smell of it,
but it’s surely tangibly here, by heart,
our own heart only.
It’s your grandmother
telling some stirring tale
about her early days,
not that every part of it
is of laudable act done by her,
clearly including
those dullest acts
done by her.
Here there is no substantial body
of your grandmother
and you are not the single being,
rather it seems like you
are two different things.
The older one is your here
and the younger one is your there,
you as being the older one telling
your own mind
the story of yours
as being the younger one.
We are like a dog sniffing
and searching for a thing long been missing.

I’ve Got A Cat to See Me

a poem by Roger B Rueda

As the setting sun touched
the trees with red,
a tabby cat
was miaowing
pitifully
outside the door.
We had heavy rain
all day.
As I went out,
it came too near me
and wagged its tail
graciously and
repeatedly curled it
round my leg.
I felt a shiver
down my spine.
I bade it to go in
at once,
my hand gesturing
plainly
in the direction
of my room.
I fed it Lucky Me
chow mein.
It didn't feel
like eating,
but it was trying
its hardest to live,
so I cooked it
enormous meals:
chicken adobo
and menudo.
In a while,
it curled up on the sofa
to sleep.
I covered it up
with a towel.
It loved to be petted
and tickled behind
the ears.
I thought fate
had brought
us together, while
doodling all over my books.

Black Butterflies

a poem by Roger B Rueda

In the fading light I saw

black butterflies
flitting about
in the garden.
Perhaps, they just
nipped in
to the garden
for nectar.
I watched
the little children
laugh,
roll, and tumble.
They stood up
on their legs
and tried to catch
the black butterflies
with their hands.
They ran
after the butterflies
in joy.
The butterflies
bent with wind
and tended
to drift,
their direction 
though they knew.
They looked
like a black twig,
a black leaf,
or a black rock.
I wanted
to leave the garden
to avoid
the black butterflies,
but before long,
an old woman
gave the children
a scolding
for spending
the afternoon
playing with
black butterflies
in the spooky garden.

A Note on Some Incorrect English Usage

an essay by Roger B Rueda
 

The prominence of correct grammar usage is every so often lost in our ever more easygoing civilisation. Though it may seem like proper grammar is only important to English teachers, there are many good reasons best known to myself  why you should give yourself a little bit of grammar preparation, to make sure you are skilled at how to speak and write by the book. Here are a few reasons why correct grammar is essential.

It might help get you a career. We live in a time where the job market is all the time more competitive. With many more hopefuls contending for the same positions, job seekers need to work harder to make themselves stick out in the crowd. A person who knows how to speak and write well will have a clear advantage over someone whose grammar skills suck.

It makes you look brainier. The ability to speak and write properly makes a person give the impression of being more intelligent and better educated. Knowing the difference between that and which and that whom is becoming unusual, categorically signals a higher brains to others. 

It helps you get your point across. Sometimes a small grammatical error can change the whole meaning of a sentence. If you wish to be understood, it is indispensable to have a good working knowledge of English grammar rules.

It gives you trustworthiness. If you are writing a paper or speaking to someone about your area of expertise, but your speech is fraught with grammatical errors, it will make you appear ill-informed, even if you are, in fact, quite familiar.

Learning it is well with the determination. It can be thorny to understand all the rules, but just the once you know them you'll have them all along.

Here are some examples based on my powers of observation, and, if you have any question, you can write in:

A lot of Filipinos always refer to sounds as music, especially when it is listened through an ear phone. Is ignorance bliss?

Philippines is an adjective used when the noun it modifies has nothing to do with the culture or history or tradition or government of the Philippines, or when an entity is not owned by the government. Thus, we say Philippines massacres or Philippines news or Philippines TV or Philippines Free Press or Philippines Graphic (not Philippine Graphic) but former Philippine presidents or Philippine senator or Philippine National Police. We cannot use South Philippine University as name for a school because there is no such a place with such an official name. For one, South Philippines (or Central Philippines or North Philippines) is neither a place nor is considered a sovereign place or whatever. South Philippines has no government of its own, so such a name should be virtually germane or likely. Thus, it should be called South Philippines University.

We say Philippine food when we mean a style of food preparation originating from the Philippines. Filipino food means a fusion of eastern and western cuisine that mixes Chinese, European, American, Arab, and Asian culinary influences.

A campus of a university must use at to indicate a place where it is situated. Thus, we must say WVSU at La Paz or WVSU at Pototan or UPV at Miag-ao or UPV at Tacloban or UPV at Iloilo City or Iscof at Tiwi or Iscof at Dingle. But we must say UP Diliman or UP Manila or UP Cebu or UP Los Banos or UP Visayas (not UP in the Visayas) because, for one, these universities have got their autonomy from central government.

Western means in or from the west part of an area. West means the direction in which the sun goes down in the evening, opposite to the east, or the part of an area or country which is in this direction. So, I think, west is more appropriate and a more logical choice when we name a territory or a particular place. So it must be West Visayas and not Western Visayas. West Visayas sounds more definite in terms of direction and boundary. Our government must delineate the boundary of their territory in no uncertain terms. See, they have been unable to resolve the dispute over the Spratly Islands.

When we've got colleges in a college, it's a bit confusing! So I hope the Commission on Higher Education should remedy this mistake immediately. Imagine that in a state college of fisheries there are a college of education, a college of nautical studies, and another college of  fisheries. Doesn't this make the people at this school go a bit funny? 

Cope means to deal successfully with a difficult situation. So, what’s cope up? I think it is virtually non-existent. Something must be done to stop the use of cope up.

Don’t use already to say that you have finished doing something, even supposing it was completed past the original deadline. In Standard English, already is used only when something was completed ahead of schedule.

What’s boundary? Well, it is a real or imagined line that marks the edge or limit of something. Or, it is the limit of a subject or principle. Please don’t use boundary as an amount public transport drivers pay their operators daily. The fixed amount of money that you pay regularly for the use of a car or jeepney that someone else owns is called rent.

Calling card seems wrong to me.  I think business card is more proper. A call card, conversely, is a phone card.

Some British words, phrases, and usage have found their way into how Filipinos use English, as with the word course, which means the same way it's understood in the UK as the entire programme of studies required to complete a degree. Americans use the academic major for the complete programme, and use course to mean a unit of teaching for which academic credit is given. Your work might sometimes be good, but the problem is you're not consistent. It's either you write in British English in preference to American English, or vice versa. Writers have to choose between the two Englishes.

I think eat-all-you-can is incorrect.  All-you-can-eat, a type of buffet food service, is much better. Here, customers pay a fixed fee and can then help themselves to as much food as they wish to eat in a single meal. This form is found often in restaurants, especially in hotels.

Go ahead is so common amongst Filipinos to mean to leave in advance. I'll go ahead means I will leave now, earlier than you guys. I'll go ahead is a literal paraphrase of Mauna na ako, which means I'll leave you now more than I'll go before you now. I think it is hilarious.

A tomboy is a girl who acts and dresses like a boy, liking noisy, physical activities. A tomboy is almost always supposed to be a lesbian, though it may also refer to straight girls who act like boys. Tomboy is not often used, if ever, for feminine-looking lesbians.

We accept is frequently seen on business cards, posters, and fliers. The phrase we accept is used to denote what orders or requirements the business can accommodate. American businesses would use the phrase we do, as in we do typing instead of we accept typing.

Simple is frequently used in lieu of unpretentious or modest. Well, simple means easy to understand or do or not difficult. It is very helpful for an English teacher to have good choice of words.

Hollow blocks is the commonly acknowledged phrase in the whole country for cement blocks. These days, however, it is considered not quite proper for writers to be discovered using non-standard terms.

Gay bar refers to a gay strip club and scalawag as a rascal police or military man. A scalawag is someone, especially a child, who has behaved badly but who is still liked.

I think chain link fence is more appropriate than cyclone wire fence.

Where do you stay? is not the same as Where do you live? Be careful with this.

Filipinos say I'm from WVSU (or any other university). In Standard English such a statement is recognised to mean that the speaker is presently enrolled at or is in work at that university. The corresponding expression in American English is I graduated from (or went to) WVSU. In British English, it is I studied at (or was at) WVSU.

I used to do exercise daily must be I used to take exercise daily. He drives his bike so fast must be He rides his bike so fast. What's the time in your watch? must be What's the time by your watch? I'm afraid you are not attending to what I'm saying.

Thanks a bunch is used to show you are annoyed when someone has done something you are unhappy about or has failed to help you in some way. Thanks a bunch for supporting me (= You did not support me).

My wife delivered a healthy boy must be My wife was delivered of a healthy boy. It's easy to confuse these sentences. So, you need to take a bit more care with your structure.

Over 100 males participated in the marathon must be More than 100 males participated in the marathon. The particle over is used for describing a physical position.

Mass communication is the process of transferring or transmitting a message to a large group of people. Usually, this requires the use of some form of the media such as newspapers, TV, and the Internet. It was coined in the twenties, with the arrival of nationwide radio networks, newspapers, and magazines which were circulated amongst the masses.  Mass communications, however, is used to describe the academic study of the ways people and groups relay messages to a big audience.So, I think, mass communication was quite popular for a while, but now it's rather passé. It was ages ago and things have changed since then. College of mass communication must be renamed college of mass communications. Mass communicators must keep themselves up-to-date.

What is the right term to use, birthday celebrant or birthday celebrator? Whatever you favour would likely be OK.

Enrollment is the American English spelling of enrolment. Well, it's important to show some consistency in our English.

By practicing language rules, any person able to read will be able to master English grammar. 

Have your shout and murmur at inkslinger215@live.com. 






By the way, APPLE Grammar, my book,  is still available! You can order it directly from me here. Or you can text me at 09068541933. Your order will be expressed to you through LBC within 24 hours. Many thanks.

Title: APPLE Grammar
Author: Roger B Rueda
Price: Php1000
ISBN: 978-971-691-990-5
Publisher: CentralBooks
Location: Quezon City 

The Death of Sonia Posen

a short story by Roger B Rueda

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The woman was dead as the audience, shocked into doing nothing, were looking at the man pointing a gun at the victims.  The news of the accident knocked her family for six deeply.

***

Over a thousand mourners attended the funeral procession. A swarm of journalists followed her car. Her family mourned her death for two years. Speculation about why she hugged the real target was rife.  She was a fashion designer whose inner life had remained mysterious, despite the many interviews she had given.

The fashion empire remained open while transitions were carried out.

***

Caniogan, yes, it is. The once so dreary countryside is now burgeoning with shops, and the streets are lined with enormous mansions where the rich and famous live. A lot has changed since William left and put Caniogan out of his mind - a place of his early days where sugarcane whose tall thick stems and leaves would put their nipah hut out of sight from being noticed from the street. The reasons he left were more complicated. William knew he was gay by the time he was fourteen, and, at fifteen, he needed to flee from here in tears as his father, battering him nearly to death with a bough, didn’t want him to grow gay, even effeminate, as he'd got a very effeminate manner and voice. His mother seemed so very meek and mild. His brothers were against his taking action like a gay. He had already found his father and brothers domineering. So, the best thing he should do was to run off the mountains or somewhere away from them. He finally reached the coast after a night walking. There, he sat on a bench in a shade of a mangrove tree on a corner and observed the passengers heading for Bacolod.

Sonia, bringing William to mind, sat in the shade of a tree, sipping tea and eating oatmeal cookies, her bonsai coconut trees, hundreds of them, and her hermit crabs listening to her litanies. She cried bitter tears when she looked at the sky.

The once-empty site is now covered with a beautiful house. Passersby have always held Sonia’s house in awe.

It is surrounded by fire trees, so it's not overlooked at all, but it’s the most beautiful place in Caniogan. She has complained about the noise from some of her neighbours’ party though she has always been very friendly towards them. Her house’s facade is kept looking clean and serene, fresh paint applied routinely. It is symmetrical with proportionately decreasing size windows on the second and third stories, giving the structure the illusion of greater size. The rear facade is dominated by a three storey full length porch and a five storey elliptical tower. The integrity of her house is excellent.

Every day, she has to fetch her two adopted daughters from school, which is a half-hour drive away. She left London a month after her husband passed away. Her husband and she established a clothes retailing business in the city centre. When he, her husband's name is Jay, died, he bequeathed most of his properties in the centre of Manila to Sonia. Now, she is one of the richest women in Caniogan. She has several houses in Manila and one in the country, in Caniogan, and a flat in Makati.

When she is not around Caniogan, she is on holiday.

***

While Sonia was driving her adopted daughter to school, a bicycle turned the corner too quickly, and her car sideswiped the bicycle coming towards it. The old man fell and injured his head.

Sonia got out of her car and rescued the old man who hurt his head and back when he fell off his bicycle.

‘Tell me where it hurts,’ asked Sonia, speaking worriedly. Her daughters ran towards her and they carried the injured man to the car. He had to be rushed to casualty.

Sonia rang in to say she'd be back home the next day and that her home help had to bring her some dinner for her and her daughters. She was monitoring his condition if it was improving.

She looked at his face and cried for joy when, after a long while, she saw him recover from his head operation. He gave her a smile.

The doctor told him that he should rest for a few days.

Sonia then left after verifying the old man, Meliton, was OK. ‘Here, let me give you my business card. I am Sonia Posen. You can ring me anytime lest you need my help.’ She then hugged the old man snugly to her chest. ‘Take care!’

After a month and a half of staying in hospital, he was taken home by her.

Meliton cried and thanked him for taking him home. ‘This is my house.’

Sonia nodded, looking at the old picture frame of their family. William was the youngest person in the family. She looked at all the rubbish on the floor.  She suddenly remembered William once more. Her thought of William reduced her to tears.

In the photographs, William had a dark complexion. He was quite short but his Grade Four classmates were very tall. He was as ugly as sin. He'd got short dark hair. He had a big smile on his face.

She remembered him.

***
William would carry a multicolour screen bag in which his Panda ballpoint and some notebooks were kept when he went to school.

‘Negro,’ greeted by his classmates. He was offended by being teased about his complexion, but, later, he was used to hearing it until it became his sobriquet.

‘What?’ he then replied.

‘Nothing. You’re so ugly!’ then all his classmates burst out laughing.

‘I’ll exact my revenge on you all for teasing me, someday.’ He then would run away and start to run and begin to walk a mile away from them.

Perhaps, being dark was natural to him as he would walk miles on a scorching summer day. He ambled down the pathway, stopping occasionally to look in the gardens of vegetables. He would go to the fishpond farm where his father worked to catch some milkfish or tilapia or any fish available in the stream besides the fishponds. He, only all of ten, and his father would pick the telescope shells clean from the edges of the dikes even those shells were too heavy for him to carry. If he didn't want to walk home at that time of night, he would sleep over in the small nipah hut where his father stayed at night.

Sometimes, William would look at men at work as they all were just wearing briefs. He loved looking at them. He wasn’t able to explain his feeling.

***

In those early months, there was a very close bond between Sonia and Meliton. She liked lending him anything, from money to cars.

She would call round every afternoon to cook food for him. She was also trying to train him to do the occasional bit of housework.

She taught him English and introduced him to her friends in Manila.

The old man couldn’t believe his luck, and how kind Sonia was.

When local government elections took place, Sonia persuaded him into running as head of barangay.

Luckily, he won the hearts of the barangay. And since then Sonia backed him and all his projects.

Caniogan became the talk of the town.

***

‘Agi,’ a boy more or less all of six called out to William. He was gnashing his teeth because of what he heard. William didn’t want somebody to call him agi or gay. His family despised a gay and William wanted to stay away from it. He didn’t want to make any of his brothers nor his cousins ashamed of him.

William’s family was poor. His father was just a fishpond custodian. His mother worked on the farm whenever there was a bumper rice harvest in their place. That neighbourhood seemed to be just right for poor families like of William. There was a rural university a walk away from their nipah hut. And so making a living here wasn’t so hard for his family. At least they could have three decent meals a day. But never did his parents think of sending any of William’s siblings to the university. They were content to be what they were, or maybe they didn’t know what they could do to get their life better. All the children could only go up to high school. His siblings would sell shrimps or tilapia or milkfish or sea bass – whatever was there. When there was not any, they would sometimes vend telescope shell. They would sort out a bushel of their father’s catch on the rice winnower made of bamboo wood. Then they would buy a kilo of rice, some refined sugar, Nescafe, and noodles for their family.

Every so often, when they had nothing to eat rice with, some of his siblings would decant hot Nescafe into the bowl and then put in rice into it. Or, habitually, they would have it with refined sugar. But never did they think how poor they were. To them their situation was a lot better than of other villagers. Never did they look at the situation of the professors nor of the workers of the nearby university. To them, they are exceptions or advantaged people. His brother worked as junior carpenters.

At school, William was gay. His classmates knew he was. He would portray himself at home as a real man, but not at school. Here, he was quite open about it. He was always in fancy dress whenever they had a school play. His cousin would savagely beat him if he took action like a gay. But when he was all of fifteen he got very intrepid. He became blustering. Only his father could try to discipline him not to be a gay. But he failed to heed warnings about it. Until one day when he was taking part in a beauty pageant close to their house, his father, blind drunk, dragged him behind him, the crowd looking at them, his dress torn on the asphalt ground. Then his father took a bough and hit him savagely. He was shouting at him to put the bough down, begging for pity as it fell on him. His arm was bleeding. His shoes were thrown over the back of the crowd cordon.

‘I’m your son, Tatay!’
‘No, I don’t have a gay son. I’m ashamed of you! Go away from here.’
William didn’t say anything. He ran away in fright. He didn’t know where to go. In the end, he decided to head off.

***

Young and inexperienced, William had been struggling to get free of his situation. He would go from city to city to escape the grinding poverty of his life. He had a strong wish to have money and hated to spend it. Finally, William got a job in Cebu City. He was a beautician there. He’d been saving his money every week. He had to go to college for a lot of years as he wanted to be a fashion designer.

He attempted to visit his family, when her mother was in hospital. He really missed his mother so much. His mother was so kind and the only one in their family who understood him. If there was one he wanted to see it was his mother. Of course, he loved his family no matter how they disregarded him.

When he got to Caniogan, he immediately went into their house. He was meaning to kiss his mother when his father came and gave him a punch on the face. He was taken aback, he didn’t expect that his father still hated him. He took his bag and walked out.

‘Don’t ever come here again,’ screamed his father. ‘I don’t have a gay son! William’s been dead for five years now.’

William cried hard. He promised not to visit his family anymore. Even when he heard that his mother died in her sleep as she was not at her best. He wanted to see her wake, but she chose not to. He would just have a flying visit to her grave on every occasion he had time.

***

After a year, William met someone in a chat room. He never expected that the woman would like him. The woman visited him after a month and they met in Cebu. The woman is Sonia Posen. She would spend all evening chatting him up and buying him drinks. They were dating for five months before they became a couple. There had been no news of them since they left for Manila.

Sonia was a well-heeled socialite. It was she who taught William a lot of things in life. He was the one who taught him how to be a good entrepreneur. It was Sonia, too, who introduced him to a lot of Manila big shots. That was the reason why William became eminent after years as a petty couturier in a small street in Makati. In a while, of course, he got a considerable standing of being the finest designer in the whole of the Philippines. He got a lot of celebrity patrons. He was famous for his long gowns. He had a fabulous collection. Several of his gowns came as sets with matching robes. There were eye-catching gowns with sheer lace insets and more traditional long gowns with matching robes. Patrons loved choosing from his beautiful selection of colours to highlight their best features. They would feel like a princess in a lot of his captivating styles.

William Piosca had become a fashion icon as he reflected society’s sensibilities through his clothing design. He had to know just about everything that’d been done before so that he could recognise it when it would become popular again. He was involved in every phase of designing, showing, and producing all types of clothing, from bathing suits to evening gowns. His day included reading current fashion magazines, newspapers, and other media that reflected current trends and tastes. He looked at materials, attended fashion shows, and worked with other designers on projects. He communicated his philosophy, vision, and capabilities clearly and carefully through sketches, discussions, and, occasionally, samples. No matter what his personal style was, he produced a creative, exciting, and gainful product line.

He had an open, creative mind, and was able to see something beautiful or useful in everything. He was approachable, and well travelled, so he was good at creating his own sense of style.

Sonia and William have broken up. William later met his boyfriend at a fashion show. But Sonia  and William remained good friends.

***

William’s father, Meliton, was an angry, hard-swearing, tattooed man’s man. By the time William came along, he was a fisherman, drinking himself to death in the evening. When he was two he got drunk and threw his empty crib across the bedroom. When he was all of twelve, he challenged his brother to a fist fight. He routinely shouted at them in front of their friends. By the time he was all of thirteen, he wished he would die.

Four decades on, he’s forgiven himself for hating him.

To his surprise, as he became kinder to himself, he formed a more rounded picture of his father. His anger had its reasons.

Humiliated, Meliton ran away from home. He was a man with a Grade Two education, reduced to knocking on doors and imploring businessmen to buy his shrimps and milkfish.

But his father’s biggest problem was that he never got in touch with his own pain, never learned how to process his feelings. Like many men, he believed the lie that ‘Men don’t cry,’ so he refused to seek out friends and instead turned his pain into anger.

The anger kept shameful sorrow at bay.

This was the father he hated. But a hilarious thing happened after he forgave him. A different father returned from the shadows, borne by a flood of reminiscence. He found himself recalling the times when he didn’t drink:

It was evening at the beach. He was five, and his father was still young and strong. Although he couldn’t swim, he had wandered down to the sea after dinner and paddled a small boat out to the middle of the water. He lay back in the boat, gazing at the mountain that loomed above on the other side of the island.

Suddenly he slipped through the middle of the boat, and he was in the water, struggling. He sank into the dark water. As he resurfaced, he could see his father running down the beach, tearing off his slippers and plunging mightily into the sea. Then he was under again, swallowing cold water, sinking into blackness.

Then he felt himself being pushed powerfully to the surface, as his father rose like a merman below him. He gasped the air, and was saved.

But his father had swallowed water, too, and began to cough and struggle himself. ‘Tatay!’ he cried in a panic. He sank below him, and he again fell back into the black waters, gulping and sputtering, stepping on his head. As they sank, the murky yellow light of the world receded into darkness, with no sound but his thundering heartbeat.

William felt his hands grip his calves and place his feet firmly on his shoulders. Then, as in the game they’d often played, he drifted down and bounced back up from the sea, thrusting him to the surface. And then his tattooed arm was around his chest, towing him to safety. Keeping his face above the water, Meliton coughed, then murmured, ‘It’s OK, Yam. It’s OK.’

Finally they staggered on to the sandy beach. As he stood gasping, shivering and crying, his father hugged him to his heaving chest. Then he went to the trailer to get a towel and wrapped it around William.

In a while, as his father heated hot cocoa powder on the stove he did the unusual - he sat him on his lap. After a while, he turned the boxing match on the radio, and they sipped hot chocolate while the sun sank behind the village.

At the end of his life, he thought his father, like him, had forgotten that day. He forgot his kindness. He wished that, when he ruminated on his failures, he had been able to remember the good things. He wished that, when he thought of his years of his disparaging anger, that he had been able to recall that day at the beach. Most of all, he wished he’d had a kind father to remind him of the good things about himself - his sense of humour, his charm, his ability to spin a story for a crowd, his compassion for the unfortunate, his intelligence, his ability to make a day’s outing with a young boy into an exciting adventure.

William wished someone had told him that he did not have to be a man of steel, that it was OK to be sad. He wished he had understood that he was no different from any of them, a mixture of good and bad. He wished he had realised that he could be forgiven, and that he could forgive. The fact was, he didn’t have to die alone in the country of resentment. There was room for him in the country of love.

***

Nowadays, Sonia Posen is something of an institution. She has written books, decorated TV studios, sung a duet with Martin Nievera and even has an orchid named after her. And the accolades keep on coming. Now in her fifties, the grande dame of Manila fashion shows no signs of giving up.

The principal features of Posen’s style are unusual colours and fabrics that people normally aren't used to see. Posen manages to make her accessory the ideal exclamation point – playing with bright colours and queer.

***

The barangay officials invited Sonia to be one of the judges as there was a beauty pageant to be held in honour of the gays in their barangay. She was so excited to attend it. She missed it already since she was a pageant fanatic when she was young.

She sponsored the pageant for Php 1, 000, 000, so the barangay officials wore the name Sonia Posen on their shirts. Her paparazzi covered the pageant for national televisions.

While Sonia and he were meaning to crown the winner, Meliton was shot two times in the arm at the ceremony. Sonia hugged him tightly to her chest as swiftly as she could.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Sonia Posen looked dead as the people looked at the man pointing a gun at her. They had to be rushed to casualty.

The police responded to it in just a few minutes.

In hospital, Meliton volunteered all the details of what happened, but the perpetrator was nowhere to be found.

***

In 2010, Sonia Posen being an AIDS patient lending her time and care in an effort to breathe life into people from lack of knowledge and lack of concern, and, worse, hatred, appeared on TV.  She uplifted those afflicted by enlightening them on the reality that is HIV/AIDS. She had stories to tell, and she wanted people to read and learn.

‘Thank you, William! I will miss you,’ said Sonia Posen on a national TV.

Meliton watched her with a surprised expression on his face. Sonia is alive. She didn’t die.


***

The next week, Sonia Posen was really back. In his room, Meliton was crying bitter tears when he got the letter. He was shaking like a jelly before it.  He hesitated slightly before opening it.

Dear Meliton,

I am the real Sonia Posen. William’s the only one who was able to impersonate me completely. And I thank him for that. When my company and his became one, many things happened. Her boyfriend was killed in their room. The police suspected foul play, and so did his boyfriend’s parents.

William ran away. Police issued a photograph of him. He wanted to commit suicide. He was wondering where to go or what to do and I suggested that he should stay in my house in Caniogan. His impersonation of me wasn't planned, it was completely accidental.

When I’d been a bit down, and away, I was substituted for him in the last five years. That was because I was diagnosed as having AIDS.  I struggled on, drawing my strength from his courage. I left the house by the back door and went to the US secretly because my disease didn't generally respond to treatment in the Philippines.

William’s death was the worst piece of news I'd heard for a long time!  It was sad to know his death that time. But now I feel it is time to move on.

Take care.

***

In newspapers, Sonia Posen company is re-launched as The House of Sonia Posen and William Piosca, Inc. as shareholders have voted on the proposed re-naming of the company. They have expanded their retail operations in almost all cities. A dividend is sent to Meliton every year.

American and British English: Variations in Grammar

an essay by Roger B Rueda

English is not monotonous, it has variety (i.e., being American and British) but is very comparable that most American and British speakers can recognise each other without great intricacy, bar in the Philippines where most Filipinos join them together (and remain blissfully ignorant of the troubles that lay ahead). There are, so far, some differences of syntax, expressions, and spelling. The following guide is intended to make the most important dissimilarities between American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) known.

USE OF THE PRESENT PERFECT

The British employ the present perfect to talk about a past action which has a result on the present moment. The simple past and present perfect, in AmE, are equally possible in such situations.

I have lost my ballpoint. Can you borrow me yours? (BrE)
I lost my ballpoint. or I have lost my ballpoint. (AmE)
She has gone to the cinema. (BrE)
She went to the cinema. or She has gone to the cinema. (AmE)

Other differences take account of the use of already, just, and yet. The British use the present perfect with these adverbs of imprecise time. In AmE, the simple past and present perfect are together likely.

Martin has just gone to the cinema. (BrE)
Martin just went to the cinema. or Martin has just gone to the cinema. (AmE)
I have already seen this film. (BrE)
I have already seen this movie. or I already saw this movie. (AmE)
Katrina hasn't come yet. (BrE)
Katrina hasn't come yet. or Katrina didn't come yet. (AmE)

POSSESSION

The British on the whole use have got to demonstrate ownership. In AmE, have (in the structure do you have) and have got are equally possible.

Have you got a house in Iloilo City? (BrE)
Do you have a house in Iloilo City? or Have you got a house in Iloilo City? (AmE)

USE OF THE VERB GET 

In BrE, the past participle of get is got. In AmE, the past participle of get is gotten, but when have got means have.

They have got an award. (BrE)
They have gotten an award. (AmE)
Marie has got two babies. (BrE)
Marie has got two babies. (=Marie has two babies.) (AmE)

USE OF THE AUXILIARY VERB WILL/SHALL 

In BrE, it is reasonably common to use shall with the first person to talk about the future. Americans hardly ever use shall.

If you do that one more time, I shall/will be very cross. (BrE)
If you do that one more time, I will be very cross. (AmE)

In offers, the British use shall. Americans use should.

‘I'm cold.’ ‘Shall I close this window?’ (BrE)
‘I'm cold.’ ‘Should I close this window?’ (AmE)

USE OF THE VERB NEED 

In BrE, needn't and don't need to are both possible. Americans on average use don't need to.

You needn't come until later. or You don't need to come until later. (BrE)
You don't need to come until later. (AmE)

USE OF THE SUBJUNCTIVE

In AmE, it is predominantly common to use subjunctive after words like essential, vital, important, suggest, insist, demand, recommend, ask, advice etc. (Subjunctive is a special kind of present tense which has no -s in the third person singular. It is frequently used in that clauses after words which convey the thought that something is essential or advantageous.)

In BrE, the subjunctive is formal and extraordinary. British people on the whole use should + infinitive or ordinary present and past tenses.

It is essential that every worker get an chance to be trained. (AmE)
It is essential that every worker gets an chance to be trained. (BrE)
It is important that he be notified. (AmE)
It is important that he should be notified. (BrE)
My co-worker suggested that I see an expert. (AmE)
My co-worker suggested that I should see an expert. (BrE)
My sister insisted that I go with her. (AmE)
My sister insisted that I should go with her. (BrE)

COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Collective nouns like family, government, jury, team, etc., can take both singular and plural verbs in BrE. In AmE, they by and large take a singular verb.

The board meets/meet next week. (BrE)
The board meets next week. (AmE)
The team is/are going to lose. (BrE)
The team is going to lose. (AmE)

AUXILIARY VERB + DO

In BrE, it is common to use do as a substitute verb after an auxiliary verb. Americans do not in general use do after an auxiliary verb.

May I have a look at your manuscript? You may (do) (BrE)
You may. (AmE)
'Have you finished your assignments?' 'I have (done).' (BrE)
'I have.' (AmE)

AS IF/ LIKE

In AmE, it is common to use like instead of as if/ as though. This is not correct in BrE.

He talks as if he knew poetry. (BrE)
He talks like/as if he knew poetry. (AmE)

In AmE, it is also common to use were instead of was in unreal comparisons.

He talks as if he was not guilty. (BrE)
He talks as if he were not guilty. (AmE)

THE INDEFINITE PRONOUN ONE

Americans more often than not use he/she, him/her, his/her to refer back to one. In BrE, one is used all through the sentence.

One must love one's alma mater. (BrE)
One must love his/her alma mater. (AmE)

MID POSITION ADVERBS

In AmE, mid position adverbs are placed before auxiliary verbs and other verbs. In BrE, they are placed after auxiliary verbs and before other verbs.

I will probably be home by midnight. (BrE)
I probably will be home by midnight. (AmE)
We do seldom receive any apology when mistakes are made. (BrE)
We seldom do receive any apology when mistakes are made. (AmE)

PREPOSITIONS

There are also not many differences in preposition use.

on the weekend (AmE)
at the weekend (BrE)

on a team (AmE)
in a team (BrE)

Please write me soon. (AmE)
Please write to me soon. (BrE)

Your grammar may sometimes be good, but the problem is you’re not consistent.  It's important to show some consistency in your work, accordingly.

After a Frugal Lunch

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I lay on a mossy passage at the foot of a tree
thinking how hard it would be to find
in any quarter of the earth
a place more fair and fragrant
than this hidden spot in Iloilo.
The perfume of the wild flowers
of the field is
more sweet
and subtle than the heavy scent
of garden blossoms.
No field could give
a fragrance half so magical
as the fairy odour
of these meadows,
soft carpeted with green
of glossy grass over.
Nor are there any birds more
lovely
in colour than the birds proudly
showing their
gold and lime, ginger and black,
blue and white
against the dark background
of bushes.
But how seldom I put a cup
of pleasure without a dash of bitters.

So long

a poem by Roger B Rueda

as we pollute the air as litterers we are,
great drinkers of San Miguel beer
or Coke or Starbucks, listening
to Lady Gaga or Bruno Mars,
time with its subtle forms,
clocks on walls ticking,
calendars on the desk,
watches fidgeted by students
or workers hurrying, seems to have
healing hands, wounds healing,
and when distance doesn’t have
far options which we can choose,
we, like water, easily contour
each crevice and each form we were,
once, familiar with.
Then the pain is over.
We’ll realise after that it’s
the memory, like a knife, that
refreshes the pain as it cuts
the wound about to heal
over and again.
Only then can we feel the real
disappearing of anguish or abhorrence
shrouding our heart, our sentiment flying.

In Tiwi

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The tilapia were biting well, and with my rising
appetite they came more and more
frequently, until we had a basketful.
Then we had to stop by the river
to prepare them for the pan, so
it was almost dark when we
treaded our way back through
the blades of sugarcanes
to our little nipah shed.
But we soon built the fire
and made things
look more jovial.
How good the tilapia looked as they
sizzled away over the glowing fire,
and they tasted even better, eaten
right out of the same pan
they were cooked in.
That was one of the best suppers
I ever recall eating, and
surely half the pleasure came
from the friendship of you
who shared and symphatised
with my thought
and entered into my fun with the spirits of a boy.

At the Sugarcane Field

a poem by Roger B Rueda


I thought the sugarcane field was not friendly
to luxury. It had no fruit more
luscious to melt upon the lips
and fill the mouth with sweetness.
But nature gave me her
silent answer.
Caracadenas nodding on
their long stems, hung
over my face.
It was an invitation to taste
and enjoy their goodness.
The berries were round
and yellow ones of the meadow.
Each as it touched my lips
was a drop of nectar
and a crumb of ambrosia,
a concentrated essence of all
the pungent sweetness of the field,
palatable, penetrating, delicious.
I tasted the odour of hundred
blossoms and the green shimmering
of the innumerable leaves
and the sparkle of the sifted
sunbeams and the breath of breezes
and the song of many birds, all in a caracadena.

Key

a poem by Roger B Rueda

A gallery of great paintings adorns your house,
and every year you put in
a new treasure to your collection.
You know how much they cost you,
and you keep track
of the quotations
at the auction sales,
congratulating yourself
as the price of the works
of your carefully selected artists
rises in the scale and
the value of your art treasures
is enhanced. You call them yours.
No, you are only their keeper.
You keep them well-varnished
and framed in gilt,
but have you passed
through the gilded frames
into the world of beauty
that lies behind
the painted canvas? You know
nothing of those lovely places
or images
from which the artists’ souls
and hands have drawn
their inspirations.
They are closed and barred to you.
You have bought the pictures,
but you  cannot buy the key,
an amorphous and impalpable mass of key.

Plazoleta Gay

a short story by Roger B Rueda

It was dark by the time Thutmose arrived in Iloilo City. The place looked strangely familiar, though he knew he'd never been here before.

The lights from the flashing neon hoardings of Jollibee and Jockey underwear lit up the dim blocks of buildings with blinking washes of red and yellow and white. A brief scatter of sooty raindrops fell from the clouds scudding across the sky. Late night passers-by stepped aside to avoid the dark caverns of doorways which were at that hour already home to the poor without a roof over their head.

Thutmose sniffed the air identifying the individual delightful smells - hotdogs, peanuts, siomai, siopao, balut, hot pandesal, and batchoy - air that had been breathed in and out, used air, sleepy air. But it was Plazoleta Gay air and for August it was quite mild. Then one individual smell caught him and he stiffened in eagerness. So many times over the centuries, so common, so far always arousing as if it was the first time.

He saw the young man by the light of the streetlights coming towards him. Thutmose looked intently, taking in the thin, pale face, the black eyes under the curved eyebrows, eyes which showed so much grief. The young man looked and, seeing that intense, personal stare, nodded, assuming that he knew him, that he was a friend who he must acknowledge. They passed in the night without an exchange of words.

In that one ardent look, Thutmose learned all there was to know about the young man - by himself and feeling alone, eaten up by an unhappy craving, weak, and unsure of himself. An evident chased, though for a moment Thutmose, who recognised how he himself needed the young man as much as he was needed, wondered which of the two was really the chased, which the beast of prey.

Thutmose turned to look after him. He had recognised only too easily the yearning in the young man's eyes, a yearning which could only be satisfied with one thing. Now he watched the young man's back as he walked in another direction, his body slim and elegant, his buttocks moving easily, flexibly with the cloth of his jeans, his shoulders, broad, his waist, narrow; he looked like Jericho Rosales. Then he followed him, keeping to the night, avoiding the bright lights of the city which upset his eyes, keeping as far as possible to the shadows that lay like dark pools between the orange, sodium streetlights.

The young man reached the entrance of his house, felt in his pockets for the key, inserted it, turned it, and pushed open the door whose lintel looked superannuated and lites undusted. Its muntin and lock rails formed like a cross. As he did so a figure emerged from the shadows at his side and he started at the sudden appearance. But Thutmose smiled softly, his teeth showing white from the shadows.

‘Good evening,’ said Thutmose, and his voice was husky and enticing, and so placid so that it drove out the alarm brought on by his unexpected emergence from the shadows. ‘I think we know each other though I have forgotten your name.’

The young man looked vague, edgy that he might be snubbing someone he had met before.

‘Thutmose.’ he said, ‘Surely you remember. My name is Thutmose. Not an easy name to blow, is it even if you forget a face?’

The young man nodded suspiciously, blushing a little as if he had made a false move. ‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘and I am Ramon. My friends call me Ram,’ he added irrelevantly. ‘Tell me, where was it that we met?’

‘Ah yes. Ram! I remember now,’ he said, ‘but cannot we go in?’ The night is cheerful and as he spoke a cool wind seemed to spring up out of nowhere almost as if the stranger had conjured it, so that Ram shivered, his thin cotton top suddenly not fitting for the unseasonable weather conditions.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said opening the door. ‘Please come in. Perhaps you'd like a glass of wine to keep out the cold.’

He led the way into his walk-up. Soft lights lit up the room. There were rugs on the polished wood floor. They had borders in which large rosettes are flanked by diagonal bars, while the fields were dark blue and covered with small, repeating geometric figures. A large sofa with overstuffed seat, short armrests, and cylindrical legs was against one wall and a bookcase against another. The books showed Ram’s interest in things ghostlike. Facing the window hung a fairy on swing wind chime, which sounded wonderful when a gentle breeze hit it, producing a musical if slightly jarring dingdong.

Quickly Ram pulled the window shut - though did he but know it, it was already too late to keep the terrors of the night at bay.

In one corner of the room were an incense burner and the fragrant smell of joss hung in the air. Set in the wooden door of the closet was a mirror whose image made the room look larger than it really was. Several pictures of cloaked beings, dark against an only slightly less sombre background, hung on the walls.

‘I'll get the booze,’ said Ram. ‘Wait, I'll open a bottle.’ He turned to a cupboard and took a bottle, two glasses and an opener. ‘I have blood stew here,’ he opened a plastic bag from Dapli restaurant in Valeria Street.

Thutmose inspected the pictures, observing the cloaked figures, their pale handsome faces, their yearning, questing eyes. He noticed the hardcovers in the bookcase. ‘You are intrigued by aswangs,’ he said, as if he had suddenly discovered what the young man really wanted. But it was more of a statement than a question.

The phellem went off.

‘It is a particular fervour of mine,’ said Ram. ‘It is almost a mania.’ He paused for a moment as if he were somewhat abashed and looked at Thutmose, ‘Do these critters really live? I mean - outside the mind's eye.’ His eyes were bright with a strange disgruntled desire.

‘I feel absolutely sure of it.’

‘It is my wish to see one.’ He brought the glasses and bottle over to a small wooden table, the top inlaid with a marquetry design, gestured to the stranger to sit down on the sofa and poured a measure of purple wine into one of the glasses. The smells of dried fruit and balmy evening filled the air. He picked up the other glass and started to pour.

‘Why?’ demanded Thutmose loudly, almost as if the question was forced out of him, and his sudden query made Ram jump so that the wine was spilled over his other hand, the one holding the glass. Ram muttered a curse under his breath and turned to look for a cloth to wipe himself but before he could move away, Thutmose had seized the hand, raised it to his lips and was lapping at the spilled wine from his skin. Startled at the strange action, Ram tried to draw his hand away. What did this man think he was doing? But the warmth of the tongue on his flesh was strangely comforting and he let his hand lie there, a passive victim, until the wine was gone.

‘Why would you want to meet an aswang?’ asked Thutmose, as if nothing had happened - and perhaps nothing significant had, though Ram was not sure. He handed Thutmose a full glass, and sipped his own. The wine was sweet on his tongue, full-bodied and rich.

‘I would like to know their oracle,’ he said, ‘the oracle of athanasia.’

‘What, is it a blessing to you?’

‘But of course,’ said Ram turning his eyes to meet those of the stranger. ‘What else could it be? Who wants to die, to lose everything that is pleasurable? To sacrifice the knowledge you have gained over the years? To become nothing?’

Thutmose's eyes were black, bottomless, to gaze into them was to lose yourself for all eternity. ‘What if you were desperate to free yourself of pain or suffering? What if you wanted to die and couldn't?’

Ram shrugged. ‘It would be worth it.’

‘Yet the aswang has to eat flesh so that he can live. Do you not think that he must feel guilt for such crimes?’

‘We all slay to carry on,’ Ram said.

‘So you think you could stand the remorse?’ asked Thutmose and beckoned with his hand for Ram to sit beside him on the sofa.

‘I should not even feel it,’ said Ram, his eyes shining with an inner certainty which was almost a madness.

‘How can you be sure - ?’ Thutmose put his hand on Ram's thigh but the young man scarcely felt it, so involved was he in his obsessive enthusiasm.

Ram persisted. ‘God must have his own bourn.’

His hand travelled gently up towards Ram’s fork over the soft material of his trousers and now Ram did notice but scarcely cared. In fact the touch was exciting, arousing and, though he had never been touched by a man that way before, he did not find it in the slightest way perverse.

‘Who cares,’ he cried wildly. ‘I would be one of them, if I could. I would become one.’

The hand, that foreign hand, that hand with its pale almost bloodless skin, its delicate narrow fingers, grasped his, felt the softness of his, quickly becoming hard. Then Thutmose unfastened the belt around the young man's waist, opened the button at the top, drew down the zip exposing the underwear and a bulge that already was larger than it had been moments before.

‘Would you allow one into you?’ went over Thutmose, taking hold of his through its soft cotton covering. ‘Would you consent to his hunger to fulfil timelessness?’

But the young man was too far gone even to answer and arched his body upwards towards the stranger's mouth as it fastened itself on his covered member, teasing it softly through the cloth, and the wetness of his tongue soaking the material so that it became translucent.

Ram cried out, a wild cry that had no words. The touch of the man's body pressed against his was inexpressibly exciting, the movements, the caresses but Ram had the feeling that it was a polished performance honed from much practice. Nevertheless, his body could do nothing but respond. Proficient fingers undid the buttons on his shirt, gently stroking and embracing his chest, gradually going lower, removing his clothes seductively, the shirt, shoes, socks, stripping the jeans, the Bench briefs in multiple fabrics with Pucci-inspired patterns until Ram lay completely naked and exposed.

His skin smelling of Cool Water lotion was almost shimmering against the red material of the sofa cover. His legs were slightly apart, his body open and vulnerable, his head laid back exposing his neck, everything to be had.

Thutmose stripped and lay on top of him. Ram could feel the man's skin touching his, voluptuous and sensual. They were chest to chest, groin to groin, and he lay under the weight of him. Ram felt an equal answering urgency.

Thutmose slid slowly down his body, kissing, tasting, rubbing, stroking - lingering for a time under his chin where the soft suppleness of his throat offered itself, and then going - perhaps a little reluctantly - further down, lower, pausing to take care of Ram’s nipples, his belly button, the trace of black hair which led downwards before spreading into his bush of pubic hair, from which his sprouted. His tongue tasted under his, along the trail which led to his hole. Slowly Ram spread his legs apart but was unable to stop the momentary, unthinking twitch of resistance as the tongue touched the sensitive place. Thutmose looked up and saw the look of worry on Ram’s face.

‘Do you want me to? You have to give me your acquiescence. I don’t take someone against his spirit.’

Ram had a passing doubt, for a second wasn't sure that this was what he wanted but almost as if they had a separate life of their own, his legs opened and he surrendered himself. Thutmose put his hands under Ram's buttocks and lifting them a little, dived into the sweet, musky darkness. At the first touch of his tongue, Ram tensed again, but suddenly was overcome by a tantalizing delight such as he had never felt before. He lay there on the sofa and enjoyed the feeling that Thutmose's balmy tongue produced, gliding over his hole, now with fast, brief cat licks, then slowing down, butterfly-light, each touch something different, each contact provoking a different sensation. Ram felt himself fast approaching a cap sheaf.

Thutmose's mouth was now nuzzling at the base of his prick and Ram felt a moistened finger gliding into his hole. It slid in without any pain or resistance. He could feel it inside him, probing and investigating, finding the very centre of his sexual being which made him groan and desire that he be invaded even further. Slowly and languorously, Thutmose washed the length of his with his tongue and licked away the oozing excitement from the top.

‘You want me to continue, don't you?’ Thutmose purred, the sounds felt through the closeness of their mouths rather than heard. ‘You want me to go all the way?’

‘Don't cool it!’

Thutmose inserted two fingers into his hole, stretching the muscle and watched the face of the young man underneath him. He gently enlarged the opening, caressing his in the palm of his other hand.

Ram knew what he wanted. ‘Come into me,’ he purred. ‘Come into me.’

But as he felt his legs lifted and sensed the urgent head of Thutmose's pushing strongly against his opening, he tensed again.

Thutmose leaned over his body so that his breath whispered into his ear. ‘Cool off your muscles. Just cool off. Cool off.’ Ram stared into the cavernous hollows of Thutmose's dark, almost black eyes which gave away nothing - with the exception of his lust. The words and the tone were rhythmic. Ram felt a growing heaviness at the entrance to his fanny and then suddenly his was past the sphincter muscle and inside him. There was a mounting fullness, a slow access. His body swallowed the intruder. At last Thutmose stopped. He was inside Ram as far as he could wend.

Ram panted. ‘Tell me who you really are, Thutmose? What are you doing to me?’

‘It is me that you have always desired.’ He bent over to glance him on the neck, and at the same time he began to move his hips slowly in and out. Long, smooth strokes which pushed both men up on a perfect ascension. They lost almost all feeling of time, of place, of sound, of vision, of the external world. The only thing Ram could feel was how the muscles of his own languid clamped around the invading his holding it as every stroke was made and the tiny rasps of Thutmose's ivories on his scruff. He heard, as if from a far distance, the loud gasping breaths of two voices and knew one of them had to be his own. The stroke boosted, his sliding without restraint in and out, increasing the pace, the sensation, building the stimulation until the point of no return.

At that very point Thutmose bit and his sharp ivories sank into the tender flesh of the scruff while at the same time his shaft pushed to its full extent, deep into the compliant hole. Any tingle that Ram felt as the needle-sharp ivories pierced his skin was subsumed into the ecstasy as with a cry Thutmose exploded and Ram felt the spurts inside him.

At one fell swoop, he himself came, his pulsating, the particle shooting high over his own chest and stomach and while Ram's blood drained, he was filled by Thutmose's juices. Sweat and red fluid and particle mixed and Thutmose bestowed his present.

Afterward Thutmose stashed his face in the hollow of Ram's shoulder, panting. Both lay and listened to each other's heartbeats steadily slowing and becoming regular. At last Thutmose lifted his body and let his slip out. Ram gasped at the sudden feeling of emptiness. He raised his head, their lips met and he tasted his own red fluid. All of a sudden he realized that red fluid was something which he would now need for his very existence. Frightened, he pulled Thutmose to him, held him close, fondled his chest, defined with the tips of his fingers the contours of Thutmose's body.

‘Is that it?’ he went over. ‘Your bequest?’ and heard the soft answer, whispered against his ear.

‘You have got the timelessness, Ram.’

Ram looked up and nodded.

‘The same pang of conscience as mine,’ a roar Ram couldn't identify from where - perhaps, from the sky or just about the corner.

The door opened.

Plazoleta Gay was as quiet as a mouse. Then petrifying claps of thunder came as a humungous black horse coming from the house took wing hounding the shadows. Then slowly a noisy crowd got nearer and Ram was walking amongst them.