Tito Boy by James Bitoy

Tito Boy

fiction by James Bitoy

Tito Boy was a man loved in the dreams of Filipino-Americanized stories. Yes, his body was often tired, as his workers made him worry about taking in another long-lost relative every other month. (There were only so many Filipinos who could not speak or write English to take care of file cabinets full of immigration papers, manila folders from Manila, Mindanao, Davao—with those thick Visayana accents that barely passed through customs). Of course, he smelled of day-old deodorant, day-old pandesal, dayold coca-cola, day-old coffee, day-old dinuguan, day-old dinuguan with rice, day-old cornstarched shirts, day-old Dior perfume, day-old Tiger Balm, day-old Salonpas, dayold Icy Hot, day old— as in day-old-day-old herbal medicine— old medicine, all ground up, jarred, creamed, and stored in plastic and tin containers ready for every other Tito and Tita to take before Mass. When we sat in Church, we held our breaths to stop from inhaling every medicinal scent known to Asia, only to wind up with the stale after scent of Shaq’s Icy Hot when we finally exited. (Though, Mass would take us down the Red Sea and Moses would split the water and allow us passage without blinking an eye— because we were chosen by God or something). And sure, Tito Boy wasn’t always kind. He could be evil, exceptionally so. Tito Jay won’t speak to him anymore, and Tito Jay speaks with everyone. Yet, even with this on his plate (and on ours), even with it swimming through our hearts, and even with our hopes for something more, we loved Tito Boy. He was a Tito among Titos, if such a concept could be; a Titoy Boy of Tito Boys, for the young men of this Little Manila (a specific locality, I know). The arc of his spine, the sharp, steady creak of his dress shoes, and lines of his ironed slacks, all of it was a sign of what could only be called sainthood or the makings of a devil. He could sing like God made him sing, and he could yell, yell so hard that the Marines tried to recruit him as a Drill Sergeant, we swear that we heard him make the poor recruiter cry. He would straighten himself upright, so upright that it was like a wall arose, to stop any bullshit, even the

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teenagers who slouched and sagged their pants would straighten themselves, futures that would be compromised by Americanization would stop, and even the Lolas and Lolos whose fears took them back to Martial Law, stifling and malnourished and subject to a power drunk president became resilient. The Lolas would say that Tito Boy was even more handsome before the silver overtook his head. Yes, to us, Titoy Boy was our hero, our Fil-Am posterchild. That’s who he would always be. But who was he to everyone else? Well, it’s easy— he was a fucking postal worker. We looked to Tito Boy for direction— on how to handle the racist white boys, who simultaneously believed us to be monkeys and nerds that speek English ah; on wearing Lakers Jerseys long enough to cover our knees like dresses, ‘cause we were Asian men and therefore as homo as straight men can be, except maybe AJ. And every day we had new exciting, life-changing trauma, from the bullies, like when Percival was thrown into the dumpster of the cafeteria and he pissed his pants when we pulled him out. So when Roberto told us that the kid from Los Cerritos— Paulo— who was playing Yu-Gi-Oh with us the day before, was given a swirly and passed out next to the toilet, we ran and dribbled our tiny brown legs to find Tito Boy. We ran from the basketball courts, the ones near Orange Park, where our Titas would sell trinkets to the white moms who wanted something exotic to show the other white moms, the courts where Rodrigo was wedgied on the rim. (Our long jerseys, hindering our knees, causing us to pull up the hems of our shirts like dresses, sauntering and galloping, but who cares, Roberto’s our friend). It was May, and as hot and dry as it was in rainless California spring, we sweated and remoisturized the earth in our wake. By the time we caught up to Tito Boy on his route up the street, we were coated in a thick layer of salt, dirt, and ass-sweat and drenched our jerseys. We were a gaggle of geeks, stretching our jerseys over our heads, exhausted from exhaustion. Tito Boy hailed us by raising his hand for us to bless him. “Show respect to your elders, ah, so you’re not disrespectful, okay,” he spoke, even though we couldn’t even breathe. He was talking in Taglish to Percival about how he hadn't come to church in a

while as he delivered mail to the various mailboxes up the street, his tone balancing on the razor’s edge of sainthood and devil. “Tito Boy, please why’re we still here delivering mail?” Percival tugged on a package in Tito Boy’s hand. “You need to learn duty first, ah, otherwise you’re not a man, just a tanga.” He removed Percival’s hand and delivered the package by the doorstep, collected the signature and before anyone could let out an objection, Titoy Boy continued to deliver the mail. “Tito Boy, I’ll become Tito Percy by the time you finish.” “Putangina! If you want me to help, why don’t you be useful and grab those letters and make sure the addresses are filed properly, baboy-tanga,” Tito Boy said. “This guy gets a salaried job and suddenly he’s the President of Little Manila. Like he’s the king of Asia or some shit.” Percy joked as he crumpled the letters into the mailbox. Which caused Tito Boy to pinch his ear—Percy let out a variety of shrieks like he was his Ate when she was getting beat. “Bastos ka! Who was it that got you into that school? Who was it that took you to get your surgery? And you want my help? Help yourself first—” And the devil took hold of Tito Boy’s hand as he rained down a plague of blows on Percival. AJ and I rushed in to stop Tito Boy, but we were caught in the swears and blows. Each hit was a reminder that Tito Boy was a guerilla fighter, a lawyer, a nurse, a student, a farmer’s boy, a Tito to more than just us, but to the whole community — and to us— right now, a devil. Because it was his duty to straighten us out so that we’d remember how blessed we are to not be back on the islands— begging on the streets for pesos. The beatings stopped. And Tito Boy left us crumpled next to his truck as he finished his route. His blue collared shirt was stained with sweat between his puffed chest and his pudgy stomach from too much pork and rice. “You have a duty first to complete, before anything else, you must do your job because if you don’t, you’re not a man.” And to Tito Boy, we were never men, we were barely boys in our Lakers Jersey dresses, we wanted his approval, his help, but all we got was an ass beating while we were too tired— as if it would have mattered. Tito Boy told us to hop in his truck as he drove back to the school, and we searched all the bathrooms for Roberto. Tito Boy was methodical like he was back under the cover of the setting sun in the jungles of our homeland, how he tiptoed around the

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hallways and violently opened the doors, how he looked under each stall for Roberto’s corpse, how many times did Tito Boy do this? When we were younger and Tito Jay was watching us, he would tell us about the times when Tito Boy went overseas to train the American PMCs. He never told us what happened after, only that it happened, and that Tito Boy came back with silver hair. Tito Boy never talked about it and Tito Jay always did. There’s one where Tito Jay said that Tito Boy sailed a boat under the nose of Marcos himself, smuggling refugees, money, guns, all while having a sprained shoulder and carrying a light machine gun like a Filipino Rambo. The refugees hailed him as a saint. (They would never see the devil that we saw today or see what the devil can do under the guise of Tito Boy, who was all parts a Catholic and all parts a sinner, and now both parts waged war thrashing the bathrooms until he could be the guardian angel for Roberto and become the devil for the white boys who would know his wrath afterward.) Then there were times where he’d see the bathroom mirrors and you could almost see the Tito Boy that Tito Jay talked about when they were younger. When we found Roberto, he was bleeding from the side of his head, probably because he was coughing so much and disoriented that he smacked it against the seat. Tito Boy looked at him, put his hands together and rubbed it, the way Mr. Miyagi did, and pushed it against Roberto’s chest, only for Roberto to wake up and scream. Roberto could not see what we saw because he did not know Tito Boy. But Roberto knew that in that silver hair, those cavernous wrinkles and dark eyes, and his callous hands that carried the weight of Little Manila, hell had come to earth. Roberto “snitched” but it was more like Tito Boy interrogated him until Roberto wished that he did not know a single lick of English, that Spanish could have saved him, but by chance or by fate, Tito Boy was Filipino, and Spain left with him Spanish in the form of sweet Senorita bread— sweet, buttery, and bad for his cholesterol— but taught him Spanish straight from the womb. The white boys made it a point to skate in the park at night and light up so much weed that only the wind at night could ever remove the stench. Tito Boy showed up, still in his blue-sweat-stained shirt and asked them with his thick accent. “You are- bullies to my kids, do not do that, okay?” And with the same temperament Percy showed before,

the same bastos behavior, the white kids said, “Fuck off you monkey!” And they tried to skate away. And to our delight but to their horror, Tito Boy, grabbed one of their skateboards and swung it across the chest of one of the kids, breaking the board in half, making the kid fall on his ass, sending one of the pieces flying towards the face of one of the kids, and then he picked up the other kid by his shirt— shook him until he pissed himself— and left them broken in the park. None of us ever got bullied again. Not even if we were playing Yu-Gi-Oh in the cafeteria, or when we were playing basketball with our jersey dresses, or even when AJ said that he was bayut and started to wear Ate Irene’s clothes. We all left Little Manila, as all good Filipino-Americans do, sometimes we come back, and if you’re lucky, you’ll hear about Tito Boy appearing again. He’ll deliver packages, solve the immigration crisis, and help Lolo and Lola across the street. And halfway through everything, he will teach a generation of bullies how to love themselves the hard way. He’ll watch the young basketball players who want to be Kobe or LeBron, and tell them to trade their jersey dresses for something smaller, despite Titos and Titas telling them that they’ll “grow into it.” And sometimes when I come back and drive across the school, I think of all the hallways, all the sea passages, all the medicines in the world, and think that because of Tito Boy, Little Manila could have it all, that every brown-skinned, fat, lanky, ugly-acne-ass kid would find Tito Boy as both their savior and their devil. ‘Cause the trauma of being Tito Boy lingers harder than every single racist word we’ll ever internalize, and Salonpas only ever heals the outside but the smell stays buried deep in your lungs and clings to your stomach like a cancer. And maybe instead of the Santonino, I should have a picture of Tito Boy. I pray, in His name, Amen.

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