A Read

Readii ng Gr
Gr oup Guide
Guide
to Carljoe Javier's
Geek Tragedies
by Adam David
Note: this guide is included here to help facilitate lively 
discussion of Carljoe Javier’s debut fiction collection Geek 
Tragedies  for your local reading group and/or classroom
presentation. Geek Trag
presentation.Geek Tragedie
edies 
s is
is a book that begs deep discussion
to be enjoyed absolutely,
absolutely, and answering these
th ese questions may 
provide the key for that
th at promised enjoyment.

1. It is recommended that you read this book’s sister

volume  And   e Geek Shall Inherit   e Earth , a
collection of essays published by Milflores Publishing
Inc, written by the same author. I see these two books
as girls-next-door sisters, that book as the bubbly ditzy 
perky frosh two-years-younger-than-you
two-years-younger-than-you sister you ask for
a handjob and then leave suddenly, this book the once-
or-thrice-around-the-block utterly worldly two-years-
older-than-you babyfat-free sister who’ll show you tricks
you’ve never felt before, whose headboard you’ve been
 wanting to bang daily and nightly and ever-so-rightly. Is
the aforementioned analogy suitably apt?

2. e title of this book is Geek Tragedies . Is this justified

  well enough by the selections, ie, are the stories tragic
and feature characters that can be described as “geeky,”
or is the choice primarily dictated by the author’s desire
to be flippant yet intellectual, ie being a play on the term
“greek tragedies?” Follow-up question: If taken to task to
re-title the book, what title would you give it? My own
 personal title for this book is Generation Whine: Tales 
 for a Decelerated Culture . Follow-up question: Is my title
choice justified well enough by the selections, ie, are the
stories meditations on the trials and tribulations and the
moralities and mores of my and the author’s generally 
spoiled nihilist generation, or is my choice primarily 
dictated by a desire to be also flippant yet intellectual,
ie, being a play on the title of Douglas Coupland’s debut
novel, which is coincidentally a meditation on the trials
and tribulations and the moralities and mores of his
generally spoiled nihilist generation?

3. Josel Nicolas’s illustrations scattered throughout the

book are humble homages to classic covers from the nearly 
half-a-century-old bibliography of Marvel Comics. Do
the illustrations enrich the reading experience if not the
book as an art object and/or cultural artifact? If so, whose
art/culture? Do the illustrations come o ff  as too garish for
a book that is positioning itself as “literary”, ie “serious,”
or do the illustrations succesfully negate any such binary 
assessments/considerations of literature and merely 
celebrates/exposes the direct connections/intersections
between the High and the Low? Are the illustrations
a subtle reference to that other masterpiece of the
celebration/exposé of the direct connections/intersections
between the High and Low and also specifically comic
book geekdom, Kevin Smith’s 1995 film Mallrats 
film  Mallrats , or is
the reference tenuous at best? Do the illustrations come
off  as merely cheap gimmicks, maybe even glorified page
padding?

4. Considering
Consideri ng the author’s
author’s reputation as a leisurely smarmy 
ladies man, can the book’s general tone of geeky social-
ineptitude-bordering-on-charmingly-light-misanthropy 
 be trusted as an earnest pursuit for whatever buried-yet-
ineff able
able Truth fiction is capable of uncovering under the
tough bedrock of Life through the shovel-sharp clarity of 
 Art, even if that leisurely smarmy ladies man reputation
exists only in the author’s mind, ie e Kobayashi Maru
of Love ?

5. After reading the book, can it still be argued that it’s

only actually a coincidence and not actual destiny of 
biblical proportions that two perfect anagrams for the
  word “Carljoe” are “cajoler,” and more importantly,
“ jacoler? ”

 You are encouraged to use the above questions to stimulate

conversations and exchanges of ideas on the potentials of at
the outset what must seem to be yet another collection of 
disparate baby-man fiction but what could actually be a throat-
clearing and fine-tuning of a voice at times still breaking, of 
ears at times still tone-deaf, of hands always sampling, always
improvising in three-bar chords the Four-Colour Blues set
against the drone of a television tuned to a dead channel after
Lost  DVD marathon,  what could actually be the
a week-long Lost DVD
latest chapter of the continuing chronicles of the tragedies
and triumphs of a generation blooming, of a rock band
guitar hero strumming on stage shouting-out back to Greg
Brillantes and Butch Dalisay,
Dalisay, echoing against Sarge Lacuesta
and Luis Katigbak, melodising with Dean Alfar and Anna
Sanchez, what could actually be a soundchecking of the front
act set for the stadium rock anthem concert soon to come,
and this could be your scalped ticket to the stage-side seats–
dudes and dudettes: ARE YOU EXPERIENCED??!!?!?!??
 Welcome to the Carljoe Javier Experience.
 Everyb
Everyb ody Gets
Gets
Off at Cubao
MOVEMENT DID SOMETHING for her, the rumbling of 
the MRT train on the tracks, her trembling inside the car. Billy 
 watched her, the mundane blue plastic seat she leaned over, the
fat man sitting in front of her glancing at her butt every once in
a while, the bland fluorescent light washing over the dullness of 
people deadened by the eight-hour workaday routine.
 As she swayed with the train he watched her hair flick back,
shoulder-length straights highlighted at the tips. e gray handle
she held for support, sliding against the metal bar, slipping,
brought her closer to him. Just as it sped by Camp Aguinaldo the
train seemed
seeme d to hit a bump and
an d with the jolt she
sh e swung his way. It
It
shook and rattled; the wail of its movement changed in pitch but
 was just as deafening.
In that moment he thought of turbulence, remembered the
plane trip that had eventually landed him here. en the memory 
 was gone as the loud swish-hum of the train brought him back,
then away again to a scene from a movie half-remembered of a
fighter jet’s after-burners kicking it into a dizzying roll, then a
heart-plunging dive.
 A dive not unlike the one that she had almost taken in front
of him.
 Was this the chance he’d been waiting for? he thought as she
stumbled then caught herself. She righted her legs, stood up
straight, then looked down at the man who was sitting in front of 
her. She clenched her teeth at him but the man was indi ff erent,
erent,
more concerned with sending off  a text message than doing a
good turn.
Billy smirked and pushed his glasses up, wondered if chivalry 
really were dead. ese weren’t days for heroes, when doing a
good turn like giving your seat up for a lady could get a mean

2
 Everybody Gets Off at Cubao

look from an old woman or a lecture on the ills of the imposed

patriarchal society from an overzealous young feminist. Heck, you
didn’t even have to want to be a hero to get chewed out, all you
had to do was try to be a boy scout and you’d get it.
Billy’s mind drifted further, thought of heroes. You couldn’t
find them in the real world anymore, but he had a bunch in his
bag. Sure, comics were getting diff erent,
erent, more mature, shooting
for the adult audience. But there’d always be kids who’d want
to read about superheroes dressed in cool costumes, using their
powers and saving the world.
Super powers were something that every kid enjoyed. He
reflected that it was what every guy wanted at one time or another,
another,
something to make him special, to make him cool. Being cool,
being able to say the right things. He wondered when he would
be able to say the right things. He wondered when he would be
able to say the right things to her.
He hadn’
hadn’t noticed that
tha t the train had slid into
i nto the Cubao station.
station .
Most of the passengers got off . She sat down where the man had
been and he settled onto the bench across her. her.
  As the passengers filed out and the doors hissed shut, Billy 
smiled and said to her, “Everybody gets off  at Cubao, huh?”
“Yep,” she smiled back; then they looked away from each other
and out the windows. EDSA was around them, and it was all they 
had between them.

“EVERYBODY GETS OFF at Cubao,” was all that he had been

able to muster up. e blandness of the statement, the lack of 
meaning it held as it passed from his lips to the just vacated train
swish-humming away from the Cubao station frustrated him.
He wished he could say something that could draw her into a
conversation, something to impress her,
her, make her want to talk to
him more.

3
Geek Tragedies

But it had taken him three months to muster up the courage

to mutter the phrase. Now that he’d been seeing her six months
almost every day on his way home he still couldn’t say more.
He held onto his bag, full of the comics that he took home every 
day from the stall. He looked at her seated across him, thought of 
so many things to say, and his fingernails ground into the fabric,
opening up the zipper where it wasn’t closed tightly.
e MRT train slid into the GMA station and she stood up,
gliding to the door before the train jolted to a stop and she almost
slipped again. He imagined himself as Superman flashing over to
catch her. She’d be lying in his arms and he’d be standing over her
saying the right words.
e hiss of the doors opening brought him out of his daze and
he shook his head, as if shaking himself back to the world. He
picked up his bag, not noticing that the way he held it made the
zipper locks slide open, and walked off  the train to follow her.
“Everybody gets off  at Cubao,” he muttered to himself as he
slipped his card into the slot, walked through the turnstile, and
  watched her walk down the stairs to the East Ave. side of the
station. He walked up the flight of stairs to the top floor of the
station that served as a bridge to the Timog side. Up on the top
floor he was alone and he muttered the phrase again. Somehow,
he hoped that if he hurt himself enough physically,
physically, then he could
forget about what he wanted to say but couldn’t say to her.
He gritted his teeth, slapped himself so hard that his head
flicked back and the weight of his bag swung him to the side. e
 world went blurry as his glasses were flung to the floor. He bent
down swinging his hands across the floor looking for the glasses.
e slight opening in the bag now jumped open and the comics
in it went flying out onto the floor.

4
 Everybody Gets Off at Cubao

BILLY
BILLY LAY DOWN
DOWN on the bed and an d put his glasses
gla sses on the bedside
b edside
table, then felt for his bag with the trade paperbacks that he had
 just gotten in it. He brought the blurry book up close to his face
until things became clear. His eyes focused on the page, but he
couldn’t seem to concentrate, thoughts unable to stay on that
comic book but drifting further,
further, still about comic books.
Comic books weren’t bad business. But they weren’t very good
business either. Billy had been trying to keep the stand running
 just on comic books but six months into it, it was clear that they 
 just wouldn’t do. He had started talking to magazine publishing
firms just to add some merchandise on the rack that might attract
more customers.
customers . Having a poster
poste r of the FHM cover babe couldn
co uldn’’t
hurt business, he reasoned with himself, after all his target market
 was adolescent boys anyway.
e stall had already been open six months, he thought. Six
months with the stall and eight months in the countrycountr y and he still
 wasn’t firmly on his feet, things shaky as he made his way paying
the monthly overhead. It It cost most of what he was making.
Lucky thing that he was living in one of his rich aunt’s houses
and didn’t have to worry about paying rent. e cash he was
spending was still money his mom was wiring him.
His little project of dropping out of school for a while and
starting up a business seemed a good idea as he made the purchases
before heading to the Philippines. His dad had wanted him to
stay in school since
sin ce he only had a year left, but he’d
he’d had the itch to
start up something that he really wanted to do, and after spending
almost all of his life in the States he wanted a taste of his native
land. It seemed like an adventure, like a hero’s search for his true
origin.
He thought he knew what he was doing, and he knew comic
books. So he closed his bank account and used all the money that
he’d
he’d saved up as a working
workin g student at the library,
lib rary, Johnny
Johnny Rocket’
Rock et’s,
s,
Sam Goody, and Toys R Us and the money that his mom had
given him to load up on his merchandise.

5
Geek Tragedies

First he bought the subscriptions for some comics and comic

magazines. He stacked up the Special Edition and Collector’s
Item comics before leaving. First issues, glossy covers, holograms,
anything that would catch the collector’s eye. He hounded all the
comic book conventions in the Los Angeles area the months he
spent getting ready for his freefall.
He imagined his freefall drawn out onto the comic book page,
a page-long lengthwise panel to start, establishing him making
the jump. e rest of the page would be filled with jagged-shaped
panels cross-cutting from his face to the way his body curled into
a ball, then spread out as he changed, the cape swishing up then
fanning out as he went into a roll then hit the ground on his feet,
the impact of his landing sending off  shockwaves.
He was still waiting for the landing though. He felt that his
cape hadn’t fanned out like he’d planned. e sales that he was
expecting hadn’t come through, and the friends that he’d met up
  with when he came back were busy and couldn’t help him out
  with the stall. He was alone, plummeting now and flailing his
arms grasping for something or someone to hold on to.
  When superheroes like Spiderman made their jumps off 
buildings, Billy thought, they were sure of things. Spidey was sure
that his spider-sense would kick in when he needed it and that
he had enough web-fluid to squirt out and pull him out of the
fall. For him the only sure thing now was the MRT rides, in the
morning to Megamall and home after closing time with that girl
 who could just be his Mary Jane.
Jane.

THERE WERE A few days when Billy closed shop early because
of the slow, lazy business. He’d head to the MRT station, but
since he had closed early he’d have to compete with all the other
commuters rushing home.

6
 Everybody Gets Off at Cubao

e trains would slide into the station, stop somewhere near

the arrows taped onto the floor to show where the doors would
be. But even before the train could slow down he could tell that
he had no chance of getting on it. Its cars would be jam-packed
 with people going through their get-home grinds.
It was times like these when he wished that he had buddies to
hang out with after work, catch a few happy hour beers before
heading home. e past months he’d been out with old friends
and cousins a few times, but hadn’t been able to get a real barkada
together. It seemed that those people he thought of coming back 
to, the elementary school friends and neighborhood kids, were off 
doing their own things, couldn’t make room for him to squeeze
into their schedules.
He couldn’t blame them. ey’d all grown apart, the way that
he grew apart from certain heroes or storylines. He understood
them, understood that they were living very diff erent
erent lives, some
still in school, others with families, still others working for big
companies that took up all their time, and he knew that he
couldn’t expect them to hang out with him like they used to. e
common interests like the afternoon basketball games or Super
Mario Bros. secrets were gone, and none of his old friends cared
for comics anymore. ey had outgrown them, and had probably 
outgrown him.
Fine, he told himself. He understood, they were all adults doing
their own things, but it still felt damn lonely standing alone on
that MRT platform waiting for a train to take him home so that
he could spend the night alone munching on chips in front of 
the boob tube. e only thing he was grateful for was that he had
cable and wouldn’t have to endure the horrid local programs.
is loneliness he felt about his friends made him think of 
himself like an old TV show. He was like one of those cartoons
that he used to watch when he was a kid and he and his friends
 would get together and talk about it the day after at school, like
He-Man or e Transfo
Transforme rs . ey were great then, but today they 
rmers 

7 
Geek Tragedies

 were more interested in the new TV shows and programs. ere

 wasn’t
 wasn’t any time for cartoons; seri ous stuff . Sure,
cartoon s; they had to watch serious
those old cartoons were great to go back to once in a while, but
nobody would want to watch them everyday with all the new stuff 
going on.
  Well, new stuff  for him wasn’t going on. And he felt the
irritation and frustration bear heaviest on him on these rush-
hour trips. ere would always be groups of kids hanging out, or
couples holding hands waiting for their ride, and he’d always be
there waiting on the platform alone, on his way home where he
 would be alone.
He’d wait with his heavy backpack, filled with comic books,
slung over one shoulder as the packed MRT trains swept past him.
On occasions when a few passengers would get o ff  the train and
he’d be standing in front of the door some other people waiting
to board the train would cut in front of him and nudge him out
of the way.
Billy would step away from the door to give the passengers
room to get off  the train. But as soon as he did one of the people
standing around would step in front of him and bump him o ff 
  with his shoulder. en another would come in from the other
side and push Billy aside, knocking his glasses loose, and the world
 would go fuzzy and he would keep getting pushed and nudged
until he looked up and saw that the doors were hissing shut and
he was still on the platform.
He would fix his glasses and watch the train hiss-clanging
down the tracks, pulling away from him and he’d look down at
the tracks, wondering what would happen if he jumped down
there. He’d be angry with himself, biting his lip or smacking his
forehead because he’d let those people cut in and take advantage
of him. Would he be able to stand in the way of an incoming
train? he asked himself. en he’d
he’d think No, why would
woul d I want to
do that? He was frustrated, angry with the way he’d been pushed
out of the way, with the dismal outcome thus far of the biggest

8
 Everybody Gets Off at Cubao

thing that he’d ever done in his life, with his being alone and the
inability to change that.
He imagined himself a comic book character driven to the edge.
It was those instances when he wondered if the villains weren’t
right. He thought of Magneto, a character greatly wronged by 
humankind and waging his own war against his transgressors. He
 wondered if it wasn’t
wasn’t right that instead
ins tead of getting angry
an gry at himself,
himse lf,
instead of smacking himself on the head, he should instead take it
out on other people, lash out at those people that had just shoved
him out of the way.
He saw it all on the page: the MRT
MRT station drawn in bland peach
and fluorescent white so that the blood of his rampage would stand
out; him out on the rails with his arms raised up, lips pulled back 
revealing fangs as he let out a righteous wail. His arched back led
down to powerful legs under which were crushed all those people
 who had pushed him aside, cut ahead of him, taken advantage of 
his passivity, now brought down by his wrath.
en he snapped out of it as he was nudged aside again as new 
people started
star ted coming tot o the MRT platform. He couldn’t
couldn’t do that,
couldn’t go mad and let everything out. He tapped his forehead
lightly, bringing himself back, reminding him that he wanted to
be one of the good guys. He pushed his glasses up fixing them so
things were clear. en he’d think of her and decide to wait in the
station until she came around.

HE THOUGHT OF Superman’s glasses, which served him as a

disguise, wondered why no one recognized Superman as Clark 
Kent. ere was a time in the second grade, when he had started
 wearing glasses and combing his hair like Clark Kent. He even
let that little curl fall down across his forehead. He waited for his
powers to emerge, but they never did.

9
Geek Tragedies

Instead of the glasses helping him to be more like a superhero,

as he thought the glasses would since most smart people wore
glasses, they had made him a joke. e other kids called him bug-
eyes and four-eyes, and he wound up sitting out games during
recess because his glasses stopped him from running freely and
his first pair of glasses were broken when he had slipped and they 
had gone flying.
ere were two heroes that he thought he could have the same
powers as, Daredevil and Cyclops. Daredevil had been blinded,
but all of his other senses had developed at superhuman levels.
 As Billy’s eyes got worse he waited for his other senses to develop.
en he realized that his chances of gaining super-agility and echo-
sense were as likely as his getting bitten by a radioactive spider.
spider.
Maybe Cyclops then, he thought. Cyclops could shoot rays
from his eyes. As a baby he’d fallen from an airplane and suff ered
ered
a concussion, which deprived him of control over the energy 
emissions his eyes made. Cyclops had to wear ruby-coated glasses
that contained the blasts from his eyes; if those glasses fell o ff 
those blasts could destroy everything around him.
Hiss.
e MRT train’s car door slid open in front of Billy and his
mind was pulled back from its drifting. He watched the passengers
moving to get off  the train and he stepped aside to give them
room.
His glasses were sliding down his nose and he nudged them up
 with the back of his palm as he used his other hand to open his
bag. He was putting the TPB he was holding back into the bag
 when someone behind him pushed his elbow. He turned and his
bag caught someone at his side with a thud.
Another person
per son shoved him aside now, and another
anothe r. A shoulder
rammed his chest and the rush of people dragged him to the car
doors that were sliding shut.
He went into a spin. e bag hit people as he pivoted, but
meeting his pivot was a wall of commuters. No matter how 

10
 Everybody Gets Off at Cubao

hard he pushed and thrashed against them he was doomed to its

thunder and crash.
Still he fought against it, but it was like trying
tr ying to stand in front
of Juggernaut as he tried to crash into Xavier’s School. Despite
the small space he’d made with his spin, the people came crashing
down on him, then pushing him aside. He made a last push
against them, but their force countered his and he lost his balance,
stumbling away as the car doors hissed shut and his glasses went
flying.
He fell on his knees, cursing and groping for his glasses, tears
coming to his eyes as he was unmasked. He had finally tried to
fight the crowd that was always pushing him, and it had left him
blind and helpless, crawling on the floor.
He wiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing the
snot dribbling down his nose with the tears in his eyes. He had a
handkerchief in his pocket but couldn’t think of whipping it out
as he continued to search the floor.
 A hand held his shoulder and he swung around to face it. e
face was a blur, but the hand placed the glasses in his hands as
he stood and straightened his back. He tried to smile as a way of 
saying thank you as he put his glasses back on.
e half smile turned into a gape as he looked into the face. It
 was her, Mary Jane/Lois Lane come to witness her would be hero
crawling the floor.
He blinked, blinked again, unable to let the thought register
and be processed, blinked again, hoping it wasn’t really her. But
  when the face didn’t change and the body didn’t fade away he
stood there, frozen, tongue hanging slack, wouldn’t move in his
mouth that was still agape. “Uh ... um ... uh ... ” He held his palm
up at her, tried to flash another half-smile, then made a run for
the bathroom.
He put his glasses on the sink and splashed water on his face.
“Idiot, stupid, dumbass, idiot,” became a litany as he splashed
 water on his face and slapped his forehead with his palm over and
over.

11
Geek Tragedies

He knew that he should have said something to her,

her, thank you
at least, should have tried to talk to her. Now he just wanted to
lock himself in one of the stalls and never go out.
He waited in there, listened to the trains coming and going,
  waited until five trains passed since the time he had started
listening so that he could be sure that everyone who was around
 when the incident happened would be gone. To be sure she was
gone.

HE COULDN’T SLEEP that night. He tossed in bed, would try  tr y 

to force himself to sleep by turning off  the bedside lamp. en
he’d turn the lamp back on and try to read a TPB to get his mind
on something else.
But the blurry images on the comic book page were no escape
from the thoughts jammed in his head, one set of images coming
into focus, then flipping to another set, then another, then back 
to the previous ones.
He kept thinking of the blurry image that became her face
looking at him. What kind of a look was it? Was it one of pity,
or of friendship, or of — what? He wished that she had had a
thought bubble up above her head so he could read it and tell
 what she was thinking about him.
Or maybe she didn’t care about him at all. She just happened to
be there at the spot where his glasses fell and her handing them to
him meant nothing more than that.
 Was
 Was it some random circumstance, some product of coincidence
that she was the one who picked up the glasses? Or are all things in
a way contrived? His being knocked aside, the blur becoming her,her,
the look in her face that he lost himself in, could barely mutter
himself back from, the words that would not form in his head nor
roll out of his mouth, the entire incident that would now not let
him go, the feeling that he was being driven towards something,
 was it all some kind of cosmic set-up?

12
 Or maybe it didn’t mean anything at all, he would tell himself,
then turn off  the lamp. And after a few moments turn the lamp
back on and run through the same thoughts again.

HE STOOD OUT on the platform, sweating. His palms were

cold and he had to keep pushing his glasses up because they kept
sliding down his nose. He tried saying thank you in diff erent erent tones
until he noticed that the woman standing beside him could hear
him and was looking at him like he was insane. He stepped away 
from the woman and walked to a bench closer to the turnstiles so
that he could see her when she arrived.
 A train slid into the station as he watched for her at the turnstiles.
He turned to see her coming out of the bathroom. She’d gotten
there before he didd id and he hadn
h adn’’t noticed her. Idiot,
Idiot, he thought
t hought as
he rushed over to the last train where she was boarding.
e doors were closing and he wouldn’t make it to the last car.
Damn, he thought, if only I could’ve been faster. He was tempted
to drift off  into imagining himself as Daredevil going into a flurry 
of cartwheels then diving and sliding into her car, but caught
himself and pushed on.
He slid into the car nearest him, and as the train started to pull
out of the station he pushed his way down the train. He bumped
and pushed, drove against all the bodies in his way, pushing his
glasses up every once in a while as they kept sliding down. He
bowed his head and thought
th ought of it as a battering
batt ering ram, and
an d he didn’t
didn’t
look up until he was at the last train and he saw her standing with
a wrapped present in one arm and the other arm holding onto one
of the safety handles.
Billy came over to her, “Um, m-m-miss can I hu-hold that for
you?”
She smiled, then handed him the present. “anks,” she said.

13
Geek Tragedies

“Well, it looked like you were having a hard time with it. I
 wasn’t sure if you’d trust me or just give me a bad look and think 
that I was a thief or something.”
She smiled at him, but he wasn’t sure if it was a Shut up and 
 just hold that thing you idiot smile,
idiot smile, or an It’s really nice of you and I 
never would have taken you as a person who’d try to pull something 
over on me smile.
me  smile. He wished she had thought bubbles above her
head so he could know.
He wanted to shut up, but imagined the scene on the page, and
knew that if he left it like that he’d hate himself for leaving empty 
panels. It would be like a superhero getting into costume just to
grab a Coke.
“Just wanted to help you out. Return the favor. anks about
yesterday, I was kinda ... you know, out of it last night. Didn’t get
the chance to thank you. So ... er ... well, thank you.”
you.”
She smiled. He couldn’t take the silence.
“You know, I feel like we’re friends now since we’ve been
catching the same train together for months.”
months.”
She smiled again, “at’s nice.”
He couldn’t tell if “at’s nice” meant at’s nice now please
stop bugging me are you some kinda psycho or something or
at’s nice I’ve been noticing you, too.
e train swish-hummed into the Santolan station and Billy 
 went quiet as the door hissed open. He sucked in, trying not to
make it obvious that he was nervous, wondering if his voice was
quivering. e doors slid shut and as the train started moving he
decided to make the jump again. He held the present in one hand
and pushed his glasses up, imagined that nudge on his glasses
equivalent to the swish of a cape fanning out.
“I’m Billy.”
“Hmm, that’s nice. I’m Janice. I had noticed you and made it a
game to try and guess your name. It helped pass the time on the
train.”
So she’d
she’d been thinking
thin king about me, too,
t oo, great Billy thought.
though t. Hold
on, what kind of names did she think of for me. He suddenly 

14
 Everybody Gets Off at Cubao

remembered Robin Hood: Men in Tights  where everyone at the

 wedding laughs at the Sheriff  of Nottingham because he’s named
Mervyn. “What kinda names did you think of?”
“Oh, lots of names, changed from day to day. I’d imagine you
 with the glasses on, then without the glasses, how you’d look like,
 what kind of name fit you when you didn’t have them on.”
Great, she avoided answering his question, Billy thought, it
must have been a corny name she thought up for him.
“But you do look like a Billy. Not
Not that there’
t here’ss a certain
cert ain look the
t he
name should have. I guess it’s just got a nice simple ring to it and
it fits
fit s you nicely.”
nicely.”
He smiled now and pushed his h is glasses back
bac k up; they’d
they’d slid down
because of the sweat that was pouring out of the bridge of his nose
out of nervousness. He couldn’t think of what to say to that, and
held his tongue as the train slid into the Cubao station.
“Well, everybody does get off  at Cubao, huh,” she said taking
the present back from him.
“Wait, aren’t you getting off  at the GMA station with me?”
“I’m
“I’m going to a friend’s party tonight
tonig ht and she’
s he’ss only a trike’s
trike’s ride
away from this station.”
“Oh-”
“anks for carrying this for me. And it was nice talking to
you. Ingat.
Ingat .”
“Okay-”
“Bye,” she said as she turned away from him and slid out the
door.
“Wait,” he called her and she looked back as the doors hissed
and started sliding shut, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, tomorrow.”
e door slid shut and he watched her pulling further away 
from him. He pushed his glasses up, didn’t bother to flick his hair
back into place as the air-conditioner kicked in and whooshed a
few strands onto his forehead into a Clark Kent curl. And as his
ears filled with the swish-hum his mind drifted to the empty page

15
Geek Tragedies

of a comic book being paneled out with rich backgrounds but no

speech bubbles yet, his mind drifted to Tomorrow.

16
Six-word Stories

129
 Carljoe Javier
graduated with a degree in English Studies Major
in Creative Writing from the University of the
Philippines Diliman. He was a fellow of the
Dumaguete National Writer’s Workshop and the
UP National Writer’s Workshop. He is the author
of two other books, the essay collections  And the 
Earth and  e Kobayashi 
Geek Shall Inherit the Earth and
 Maru of Love .

169
 Josel
Jos el Nicolas
Nicolas
believes in feeling the noize, and drawing to it
naked. He draws and writes Windmills , the third
book just released in late 2010, and has a monthly 
four-page strip called “Doctor Brick: Balloon +
Scientist Problem Solver” running in the kiddie
magazine K-Zone . He is on Facebook and would
love if you would add him. His email address since
highschool is ajora_metalanger@yahoo.com . He can
also be found at nekid-monkey.deviantart.com.

170
 Adam David
is a bookmaker.

171