Journal Roulette, May 2001: A Discarded Novel
In which I get a random notebook from my boxes of journals dating back to 1980 and transcribe an entry.
This journal contains part of a novel I started in 2001, worked on sporadically, finished in 2008, read, and then threw away. It would’ve been my first novel, but I didn’t like it—it may not have been hideous, but it wasn’t any good. What’s the point of writing a novel if you can’t read it without rolling your eyeballs? It took me another decade to write a novel I actually like, and when I finished it people said, “It’s too short.” I don’t care, I’m not padding it with filler. (My first novel is called The Age of Umbrage. It was published by Ateneo University Press in 2020.)
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead blah blah.
The baggage carousel had orbited four times and there was still no sign of my suitcase. I didn’t think it had been stolen—it was a beat-up old thing with a wobbly wheel, and you had to slam it shut or the lock wouldn’t work. You could probably smuggle things in it because no one would waste their time inspecting it. Not that I’ve ever transported contraband or knowingly committed a crime in my life. Everyone has to live with a personal curse, and mine is sanity. I may be the sanest person I know. When I was younger I thought I was crazy and tried to behave accordingly. I was good enough at it so people described me as “different.” Now that I’m pushing 30 I’ve realized that I am a sane person surrounded by raving psychotics who think they’re sane. Here’s a tip: If you worry about losing your mind, it is very likely that you still have it. If you’ve already lost it, you wouldn’t be wondering about it.
My suitcase was probably deep in the belly of the plane, buried under everyone’s luggage. It’s a law of the universe: if you do the smart thing, like arrive at the airport three hours before your flight, you will pay. It’s the smart people who pay; stupid people always get off the hook. Maybe it’s the people who think they’re smart who really are stupid, and vice versa.
I tried not to be too early at the airport. I took a long walk in the park, dawdled in a bookstore, bought presents for my staff. I bought a dozen roses for the friend I had stayed with, and chatted up the doorman from Bosnia, who thought I was Chinese. The Senegalese taxi driver in flowing robes who brought me to JFK had even made a wrong turn, which wasted at least ten minutes. I still got to the airport at 12.45, then learned shortly afterwards that the flight would be at least half an hour late.
On the carousel a large cardboard box mummified in duct tape began its sixth revolution. The carousel was full of boxes: it’s almost un-Filipino to go abroad and not return with a box of goodies for everyone you know. The Filipinos who moved to Hawaii or California and haven’t been back in twenty years bring chocolate and quilted toilet paper for those they left behind. They also lug clothes they bought from the outlet malls in Paramus all the way to Manila, and then they find that the clothes were sewn here in the first place. Inevitably they return to Honolulu and Tarzana with shocking tales of the squalor they had witnessed in their native land, which fortunately was no longer the country on their passports. The overseas contract workers bring stereo equipment, perfume, and gold jewelry.
The box encased in tape bore its owner’s name on every side: Farrah Jaclyn Kate Dimaguiba of Fairview, Quezon City. It was the first box off the plane, why had she not come to claim it? Perhaps she had forgotten it in her excitement: I could see her dashing out of the airport to search the crowd jostling behind the barrier for her feckless husband, the beer-swilling ape who used the dollars she earned from scrubbing white people’s floors to buy gifts for some floozy…
I’d been waiting half an hour; I was entertaining myself.
Finally my suitcase came into view. I yanked it off the track and tried to wade through the mass of people gathered around the carousel. No one moved. “Excuse me,” I said grimly, dragging my suitcase over someone’s iridescent Nikes. I was prepared to crush any number of toes to get home; I’d been in transit for 21 hours straight, I was desperate for a bath. Suddenly there was the sound of running. I looked up and saw several men in uniform dashing towards the carousel. One of them climbed onto the track and addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “We have received a report that there may be a bomb in the baggage claim area. Please do not panic.” He disappeared from view as the carousel went around the bend.
For a second everyone froze, and then they began to run. Not the exits, as most people would, but to the baggage claim area. The fear of getting blown up was insignificant next to the ignominy of missing a spectacle. The spokesman for the bomb squad reappeared on the track. “Please take your personal belongings and proceed to the exits in an orderly fashion.”
At those words a swarm of people descended on the carouse. I remembered those schlocky horror movies in which piranha attack a scantily-clad girl, and when the fish move away all that’s left of the girl is a skeleton. When the swarm left the carousel the track was empty. Every piece of baggage had disappeared; there wasn’t a single luggage tag or strap left. And then something appeared, coming round the bend. It was a large cardboard box mummified in duct tape. On every side it proclaimed its owner’s name: Farrah Jaclyn Kate Dimaguiba of Fairview, Quezon City.
The same logical proposition flashed through everyone’s minds. There was a bomb on the carousel. It couldn’t be in someone’s bags, because why would you claim your bag if you knew it would blow up? Therefore the unclaimed box contained the bomb!
A man wearing a Jubilee 2000 T-shirt with the bloody face of Jesus Christ under a crown of thorns opened his mouth and screamed. “Move away from the box,” said a guy in uniform. “Please give us room.” The crowd took one step back. Two bomb disposal experts knelt on the tracks by the box and slowly began to peel off the tape. The crowd held its breath. It occurred to no one that they should get as far away from there as fast as they could, in case the package did turn out to be a bomb. I couldn’t get away—I was wedged between a woman gripping a fake Louis Vuitton valise and a teenage boy with blue streaks in his hair.
The bomb expert gingerly lifted a cardboard flap. A deathly silence descended upon the audience—for a second we were on the very edge of doom. Then the bomb expert opened the box, reached into it, and held up a small plastic cup wrapped in colored plastic.
Instant noodles. You add hot water, wait two minutes, and they’re ready too eat. The box was full of instant noodles. “There’s something else,” said the bomb expert. He reached in and took out a bundle of tiny red lace panties. There were dozens of them. They were not ticking.
The crowd seemed almost disappointed that they were not maimed or killed. They began to disperse, lugging their packages to the exit. A tiny woman in impossibly high platform sneakers came running to the carousel, emitting little squeaks. “That’s my box!” she cried. “I forgot my box!”
This, I presumed, was Farrah Jaclyn Kate Dimaguiba. I tried not to imagine her in tiny red lace panties, eating instant noodles.
The customs inspector expressed some disbelief over my luggage. How could I have been abroad two months and have only a suitcase and a backpack?