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A Star for Charly
By A.M.B. Apalisok

 Charly is Brig. Gen. Carlos Bustrillos Holganza.  In the old days we (Charly himself, Bobbsey a.k.a. Melba Manding Buma-at, and I) called each other “Boss.”  How that mutual sobriquet came to be I can only credit to Bobbsey who’s rather fond of sobriquets.   

 Our friendship with Charly began in a stage play of the then Divine Word College.  Like us, he auditioned for a part in the morality play “Everyman,” translated as “Ang Tawo,” with the then 21-year-old Gardy Labad at the helm.   

 Charly bagged the role of one of the seven deadly sins, “Greed” (Kahakog.)  So did I also pass as another deadly sin, “Lust” (Uwagan.)  Why it was translated as such instead of Kauwag convinced me, though I couldn’t complain, that the heavens were unkind.  But that’s another story.  Bobbsey and her fine booming voice meanwhile bagged the bigger role of “Wealth” (Bahandi.)

 Anyway, as it often happens in rehearsals of stage productions with a massive cast and everybody’s young, the backstage becomes a playground and an arena for socialization.  There the cast and crew who await their turn chatter, play and never stay put, until the director shouts.   

 There we saw Charly act like a monkey, to our fascination.  Bobbsey and I asked him to do it again as we followed.  Call it monkey business if you may; it was easy.  Perhaps it’s because we are close cousins of the simians.  Thanks to Charly though, I can still effortlessly do that monkey stance until now.   

 The stage play was over and our friendship with Charly stuck.  Funny I never went beyond looking at him as a high school kid.  I once wondered what he was doing at the corridor of the school’s engineering department as I waved at him from the ground.

 I no longer remember how it started but we took to going to Charly’s house.  Serve us cooked bananas and ginamos, Bobbsey declared.  (I surmised that Bobbsey was the noisier one who always said what she wanted while I was the more temperamental one who tended to follow what she liked.)   Charly’s smiling parents Paul and Charing served us those bananas and let us be.   

 We actually went to Charly’s place for Math tutoring.  Better still, we asked him to do our Math assignments.  But we looked forward more to what we did for hours after five minutes of Math.  Charly knew how to play ‘spirit of the glass’ and his paraphernalia of drinking glass and manila paper were ready.  I still remember his admonitions.  Call Rizal, never Hitler.  Don’t do it in the cemetery or you’ll end up running like we did, he had said.       

 My dog is now mature, Charly once said as he picked the ticks and fleas off his dog.  It was one of their many dogs in their place that was an oasis of a farm within the city, punctuated by abundant trees and plants and free-ranging animals.

 It was just something in Charly that made Bobbsey and I feel that gender was no issue.  He was a gentleman’s gentleman who couldn’t and wouldn’t think ill of us, two rowdy, immature teenage girls on an awkward social roller-coaster ride.

 One day Charly disappeared from the campus.  He was already at the Philippine Military Academy.  I saw him again some years later at the Academy.   His head was shaven long before shaved heads became fashionable.  It was during our Manila reunion later that I learned that he came from field combat as a second lieutenant at that time.   

 When we had that brief reunion after thirtysome years, I realized it came naturally to still call each other “Boss.”  I guess humans tend to revert to where they’ve left off, such as in the case of our particular three-cornered friendship.   

 Despite his busy schedule, Charly had managed to join us and our husbands at that time.  Updating each other was pleasant enough.  More pleasant was realizing that nothing much has changed about our friendship or our attitudes.  We’re just older.

 The years have flown and the boy who taught us Math and ‘spirit of the glass’ and picked ticks and fleas off his dog is now a brigadier.  He has a wife, four children, two dogs, two cats, three brothers, and parents who evidently reared him well.   

 â€œThe child is father of the man,” William Wordsworth wrote.  As sure as I’m sitting here, Charly was, and is, first and foremost, the kind who can be expected to choose what decent human beings abide.  I won’t be surprised if he earns additional stars on his military shoulder boards.

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