BATTERED MEN

Dear Mouse, If there are battered women, there are also battered humans from MARS. The lady I met in one of the seminars I attended back in the Philippines, can be regarded as husband batterer. She did not feel offended being given such label. In fact she was proud of it. It was in one of those boring moments of the seminar when she invited me at the coffee shop of the hotel that I came to know about her. She was a chatterbox but a successful customs brokerage proprietor too. Attending seminars is just one of her activities to while away the time for otherwise very routine work of waiting for some shipments, working on the papers for the release and delivering them to the clients. She took fancy of me because of my face and my eyes. She intimated to me that before she finished her business course, she enrolled in criminology and was just a few semesters shy when marriage intervened in her dream to become a law enforcer or a detective. She had a whole set of Nancy Drew Stories and Hardy Boys in her bookcase. One of the courses in the Criminoloy is Physiognomy, the art of studying facial features that reveal the qualities of mind or character of a person. I was interested to hear what my face reveals of my thoughts and my character. She held me in suspense by interpreting her profile first. She started wit her firm jaws and thin lips. She said that men should be afraid of her for she can kill if she wants to. Ngeehhhh. She told me a story about her husband. She had an appointment with a client in a restaurant when she saw her husband inside that restaurant playing lovey dovey with a beautiful young woman. In her own words: Ay naku daaay, umitim ang aking paligid. Ang tingin ko sa aking asawa ay isang lechon na dapat i-chop cho at ang babae naman ay manok na dapat alisan na ng balahibo. Lumapit ko sa tarant...bleep bleeep... sa bigla niya ay nagtangka siyang harangin ang buntal na pinakawalan ko sa kaniyang mga mata. Tinakpan niya ang kaliwa... kaya kanan ang aking pinuntirya. sapol. black eye. whooo. Karipas ng takbo ang babae. Kagulo sa restawran...Isang buntal pa na may kasamang sipa tapos katakot takot na kalmot. As usual huling dumating ang mga pulis, bugbog sarado ang aking asawa na nabigla. Sabi ko sa mga pulis, magdedemanda ako... Sabi ba naman ng mamang pulis...eh misis, dapat ho kayo ang idemanda ng mister ninyo. Eh lamog ho siya sa bugbog ninyo. Sabi ko sa kaniya, baka gusto mong makiramay sa kaniya...ngiti siya at urong.... The couple made up for the sake of the children. She was happy. He was coming home early...no unexplainable disappearance in particular time of the day...in fact he was staying home most of the time. Wife's hunch, she came home one day to check on him who excused himself from going to the office because he was running temperature. The maid run out from the master's bedroom without a stitch on but a blanket wrapped around her. hmmm. Her husband leaped from the king size bed...as she reached for her revolver. She fired and the bullet hit the dresser's mirror. Basag...she fired again and again. She winked to me...tinatakot ko lang ang pu...bleeep bleeep... So what happened, I asked her as she stopped relating the story while she savored her black coffee. Ay naku daay.....yan ang mahirap sa nga Pilipina. kaunting himas lang patawad at tuwad na....dahil daw sa mga anak...punye...bleep bleeep mga anak yan..tapos iiwanan ka rin..... So, what about my facial features ? I asked... Owww, she forgot...yep she asked me if I have already registered to the Martyrs' Club.... You are like a tiger but you are really a CAT inside. But cats can kill a snake with its claws too. And with that she ended her story and we both received the Certificate of Disappearance...I mean Certificate of Attendance and Appearance. The CAT