A CLOCKWORK ORANGE AND OTHER ALTERED STATES

(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 25 JULY 2008)

I have since last Saturday seemingly developed a hypersensitivity to alcohol. It isn’t exactly an allergy, except on Sunday morning, when in the shower at 7 a.m., 30 minutes after I got home from a long night of drinking, I thought I could smell alcohol from my body wash and thereafter from my face cream. As a result the shower didn’t seem to sober me up. Instead, it sent me to bed feeling as though I had one more shooter to force down my throat. And I did, but let’s talk about that later.

BLURB
It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it a perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van. —Malcolm McDowell as Alex, A Clockwork Orange, 1971

Last Saturday would have been a long night, except that we were having fun. First order of the evening, following a few hours at the office, was dinner at Grappa’s on N. Garcia. The place was nothing special, but, like a preview to what the rest of the night had in store for us, the dinner was. I’m not at all new to this restaurant, but for the first time I was literally licking the plate clean of every last bit of my puttanesca and my Quattro Formaggi.

Next door, at the Purple Feet Wine Depot, Diether Ocampo was hosting a degustacion for his birthday. It was a quiet, intimate dinner, contrary to our expectations, which was the reason we had dinner elsewhere. This party was not for the celebrity, but for the person or, to be more precise, for the charitable soul behind K.I.D.S Foundation. How refreshing it was that over glasses upon glasses of red and white—not to mention course after course of continental dishes, which we skipped—the conversation revolved around public schools that need help in Benguet or the children’s wards at the Philippine General Hospital and the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC). Incidentally, only a few days before this party, Style Weekend and our monthly magazine Sense&Style collaborated with K.I.D.S Foundation, along with our friends, Lynn Sunico of Makati Skyline, Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato, and SM Storyland, in throwing a kiddie party at the POC children’s ward, replete with balloons, an ice cream station, hot dogs, spaghetti, chicken lollipops, the mascots Sergeant March and Lionel, face painters, and gift bags full of books and toys.

From Diether’s dinner at Purple Feet, where we were happy to have drunk to better, more charitable days with Diether and Karina Tañega of K.I.D.S Foundation and many of their avid supporters like Nike’s Mia Trinidad, Mondo Castro of the Pin-Up Girls, The Good Earth’s JP Castrillo, and Kate Torralba, we moved to fashion photographer Charles Lu’s farewell party nearby.
Over the years, we have collaborated on countless fashion and beauty editorials, and not a few of our cover pictorials for Sense&Style, with Charles and now that he is ready to turn a new leaf, transporting his whole life hook, line, and sinker to New York, it would have been a crime if we failed to say goodbye.

What a send-off it was! Held at a bachelor’s pad owned by Charles’ cineaste friend, Jardine Gerodias, it was a throwback to those college club parties, where strangers stood next to each other, bound by drink after drink after drink. In one room, some people were playing the Nintendo Wii game Rock Band. In another room, some were shooting the bull and horsing around. In yet another, the smokers converged, packed like a can of sardines in a steam room. But the center of it all was the bar, set up by the Sober Club and lined with an endless number of shot glasses full of alcohol in all manner of form and flavor, not to mention all the colors of an Akira Kurosawa movie or at least a chapter from his Dreams, especially once alcohol began flowing through your bloodstream.

“Choose your poison,” said Soda Club owner Jenny Peregrina, gesturing with a sweep of her long arm toward her multicolored collection: Ibiza Grapes, Peaches, Citrus Attack, Orange Crush, Mojito, Apple Concoction, Silver Spider, Quicksand, Shark Attack, Pink Slush, Jell-O Shots, and so many others. Our favorite was the Boracay Mocha Blends, but most exciting was what the bartenders called “The Flamers,” a drink that’s lit up directly in the drinker’s mouth.

Needless to say, we were, to borrow from Morrissey, “happy in the haze of a drunken hour” that stretched from way past midnight to way past sunrise on Sunday morning, particularly when Jardine the bachelor of the pad, a film graduate from Berkeley, took us through his extensive collection of all-original movies and music videos, both artful and commercial. The best part of it was I left the party, squinting in the punishing sunshine, with some loot, a copy of Michel Gondry’s latest release, Be Kind Rewind, and the ’70s cult classic from Stanley Kubrick. Of course, I swore to return them and I will, though I made the promise—and Jardine received it—in an altered state.

So I came home on Sunday morning just before seven and, feeling as though there was alcohol even in the air I was breathing, I didn’t sleep until much later, allowing myself to get lost in the future-shock scenes of Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ controversial novel.

Soon, at last, the party was over, as the curtain that was my eyes fell on the end credits of the DVD. I drifted into the REM stage, most probably humming either Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” or Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” from the soundtrack of this deeply engaging, entrancing, powerful, and downright stylish film, A Clockwork Orange.

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com