WARNING: This will be long, and badly written.


On the way home after a late Saturday night out with the Dayzers (Rakstar ka Joshua!) Ben offered to buy me breakfast (yeah, it was REAL late) in exchange of me driving him home. Fair deal.

(Kate, this was after we got you home, stealth-ninja-style.)

One of the things we talked about was my kid brother, and how he's been M.I.A. on a lot of these awesome parties. So, I had to tell him what had been going on, as it's hit a 'new low' so to speak.

[I'm writing this narrative for the same reasons that I write poetry, and short prose: so I won't forget. So I can sleep better. And if I don't wake up, so that there's gonna be something here to remember me by.]



Three Saturdays ago, as I got home from a rather delightful day at Kendo, Roel sat me down to talk. He said it was 'something I did'.

He told me that he called this girl (who we will hide behind the letters J.L.) on the phone to greet her 'happy birthday' and the conversation broke into an argument. He asked her why she's been so cold to him. She replied with an anecdote of how 'a guy named Doval was stalking her cousin'.

You see, my brother's in love with this girl for a while. They were acquaintances a few years ago, but despite my brother's most earnest actions (flowers and such), she had to say no to him. There's a laundry list of reasons why: her Chinese family, her parents' rules, her then-impending move to Australia, other boys, her work as a model and 'standards', lots of reasons. We know little for certain of how close they were - he keeps his cards close on that one.

Many people would learn from this, and restart with somebody new. But like every good Doval-Santos child does, he never gave up. He kept carrying that torch high. While we liked how he'd suddenly act all inspired-like, we saw anomalies. Like, how songs he wrote started to sound 'awkward', like how somebody just blurt out they "find you sexy" in front of your parents awkward. Then we saw the PC hard drive was cluttered with pictures of her (last check as something like 100MB of pics, from Friendster and Multiply.). Then there were those notebooks littered weird poems we didn't care to read anymore (one was left behind in the car once when I took it, and thank God my companions knew it wasn't my handwriting). Then there was the 'shrine'.

Needless to say, we found it fucking creepy. And this had been going on since... hmm. Since I was in 3rd or 4th year college, if I remember. It just kept going!

None of us sibs could get through to him about it. He was quite combative about anything we said, and he took to us like a bull to a matador's cape. We tried to get our parents to intervene, and they always said "oh, it'll be ok," or the staple "that's not your job to do that, Raph."

I kept my mouth shut, as free hard drive space disappeared slowly, or how his weird songs would fill our house. He'd be happy one day, and then depressed and brooding and playing DotA alone another. He'd sidestep any constructive criticism - how his songs sounded, how he dressed, anything - and even call us 'insulting' him and 'not supporting him'. He'd charge us of talking behind his back. He demanded we didn't interfere, and scuttled any offer to help.

So we stopped - we left him alone, and we didn't try to help. Still, it kept going, and the girl still kept shaking him off, or hiding, or dodging phone calls. One time she had her kuya sic on him and over the phone he gave my brother a piece of his mind. Real awful day, that was.

He started to change his ways, somehow since then. He sort of toned down - he locked himself in the computer room with loud love songs playing and her picture on screen no more. He put away the magazine clippings and the flowers off his desk that made the shrine. He kept talking about 'trying to move on,' while trying out acting classes, and modeling workshops or all that.

December, he said he wanted to go to med school. You have no idea how overjoyed my parents were at that news, given that my sister and myself seriously do not want to take up my father's practice. While we all were scurrying around helping him study for NMAT, or to look for a school that would accept him without Biology units, he wasn't all so excited - he was glum. It was not the look of somebody who "found his purpose" as he said. He often nodded, and looked away. He looked like somebody who was in for Death Row.

He looked like me, February '07, staring down law school grade deficits and rapid inspiration loss.

Months passed and we thought everything was gonna be okay. He would reassure us that he was done with the girl, that he "had to prepare for his new life". The creepy pictures were still on the hard drive, but he looked so absorbed in medicine. He looked slightly more cheerful (although maybe the NBA playoffs had something to do with that). I was ready to think that maybe he had turned a corner, like he kept promising us he would.



Until, of course, the story of "Doval" allegedly "stalking her cousin".

That cousin was somebody I liked back in the day. WAAAAY back 1st and 2nd year college. Somebody I tried to woo, and somebody who also said 'no' to me.

Who knew?

I was shocked by this turn, because as far as I knew, myself and that girl (whom we shall hide under the initials A.K. hehe) were, and still are, very good friends. Yes, in spite of her father getting angry at my phone calls, and how her friends were, at times, tense, even hostile to me, we actually got along pretty good.

And I fell for her then for a very good reason: she was a genuinely sweet, caring person, for everybody she knew. It was hard not to like A.K. How such a sharply painful story - stalking - could come from her was out of this world. It sounded too much like J.L. using something, anything, as an excuse to shoo him away after four years of dogged pursuit.

Roel would have none of that, for "he didn't know that bitch" as spoke in his frenzied pace. He was up in my face, the way a desperate man begs. "You have to help me. You have to do something about this. You have to fix this." And he keeps begging me to talk to A.K., and get her to tell his crush how he's really a nice guy, who wants to know her cousin better. That he loves her, and wants the best for her.

I was appalled - "I thought you were through with this?" I asked.

"I'm not FUCKING done with J----. I went to med school because her current boyfriend is a doctor! And that she wants a doctor for a boyfriend!". (And how he got that last bit of info while they were not in touch was just too much.)

I tried to get myself some elbow room. I hadn't heard from A.K. in months. I had lost her phone number with my old phone. I kept her at YM, but she's a career woman, and often away at meetings and working. I had never been to her house. I wasn't friends with her friends (see above).

"If you love me, if you''re really my brother, you'd clean up this mess you made."

It's hard to describe what you feel when your kid brother tells you something like this. Especially given how you knew it's not your fault. What I did let on was anger. I snapped at him, I yelled, I was insulted and let him know not to question me as his elder brother. All of that. He backed away, like a tiger backs slowly from a hissing snake, with a snarl and hard eye contact.



My principles would win out. We talked Monday, and A.K., true to form, was really gracious about it. The YM transcript is still here. She agreed with me that something may have been said wrong. She said she'll talk to her cousin, J.L., when she could to help sort it out. I even joked "for all we know, it might have been me! but that was ages ago, right?" and she said, "oo, tagal na nun. and you weren't a stalker."

With smiles and all, we though this was over. I tell Roel - thinking he'd be content.

Roel then went on a barrage of questions - what did she say, what will she do, did you tell her to tell J---- that I love her? - and I was quite annoyed. I calmly, softly replied, "they'll talk. and we'll see."

His tone changed to resentment. He then said something about how I was to blame for 'ruining his life'.


2 days later, my Dad calls me aside as I was on my way to the kitchen. Roel was there, and he looked despondent. My father heads me off, and told me the scoop: J.L. and Roel talked again. And she's threatening my brother with a restraining order. I am instructed to "give him space". The effort Dad has taken lately to keep us from being in the same room together shows how serious this may be.

We have not talked, and I have lost count of the days.



It's dragged on for this long, and in my heart of hearts, I know I'm clear. I know that I'm not the one who obsesses over someone who shovels back nothing but shit.

This has gone far too long, and now, I'm starting to rue introducing him to my other friends. To wit, he told me he liked one of my closest friends, (one whom, I myself find quite enchanting) and now I worry silently when I see him try to talk to her. I'm scared this awful fiasco with his crush may repeat. And I don't want that, because if he messes with her, fuck 'brotherhood', I'm kicking his ass. (and besides, he showed me what being a brother means to him anyway.)

Ben asked me, "If it's not your job, whose is it?" and I didn't know what to say. He's right, you know. It's a job that's gotta get done. And get done soon.

I'm tired, and I don't know what to do. Lord, I don't know what to do.