Unlicensed

PASSING THROUGH THE DUSTY track to leave the gym premise, I amble as I stoop my head to avoid conversing from a far-flung aloofness. Then, few steps nearer to the old-aged table at the gate, I look up and flash my unfeigned boyish grin.

“Sige po Kuya, alis na po ako,” I say to the security guard of the RONGUI Building where my gym is located.

Then, I receive a feedback. “Sige, ingat,” says Kuya as he salutes with the eleemosynary expression on the planes of his face, which is weather-beaten as if he is bushed but keeps on living to earn his being. His grizzled hair is also thinning that it means he has long been aging.


Afterward, my days go on with all the workloads I have to do. But I know to my self that someone from the gym is real as an old friend. I call him the “unlicensed security guard” because he doesn’t have a uniform. He just wears his typical red polo-shirt, which he interchanges with his couple of blues and grays.

Kuya has been guarding the RONGUI Building during the day ever since I first came in that gym when I was still a freshman in college. I was still playing Taekwondo then despite my flimsy body and pale, powdered-white skin. Then I ceased from attending when my Taekwondo association was “bankrupt”!

Since then, I never visited that gym until I was in junior college. When I returned, it’s not for Taekwondo but for weight-lifting and bodybuilding.

Kuya remembers me, I know. I verified that when his wife, a curly haired woman with sunburned skin and warped teeth who recently began working as the cleaner in the gym, told me something.

“Naaalala ka ng asawa ko. Dati daw ang payat-payat mo, ngayon and laki na ng katawan mo,” she said few weeks ago. I answered, “Ah opo. Nagtataekwondo po ako dati dito sa gym na ito.”

Last week, Ate - it’s how I call his wife – asked me if what happened to me because I didn’t attend the other day and that’s unusual for my image. Instead of saying that my schedule is hectic, I just answered, “Tinamad po ako bumangon eh.” Well, I suppose that is half-real and it will conceal my bashfulness.

Last Tuesday, however, Ate was missing. Perhaps she’s sick, I thought. But then, Kuya was missing too. The man in the table was a young boy with his youngster’s mustache.

Wednesday yesterday, I didn’t attend the gym because I talked in a seminar. I don’t want to disfigure my curves and lose my virility if I’ll start to be sluggish in weight-lifting; so I attended this morning. Still, Ate was missing. Then, Charles, a gym-mate, told me the news, which flabbergasted me clandestinely. I never thought Kuya would leave in an unlicensed manner. But I suppose no one can predict that, anyhow. Occurrences come by accident with no license.

Charles said, “Hoy Alchris! Alam mo ba? Patay na yung security guard diyan sa labas, yung sa harap…”