Almula Night

The thumping sounds of Bed greeted me, and I parted the curtains expecting to see the usual Friday-sized crowd—not as plenty as Saturday, but jumping just the same. Lo and behold, the dance ramp was already crammed with gyrating bodies, and a collective yell or two would reverberate from them. Wow! I knew that guest DJ Jomel Carpela (a Pinoy who now spins for Volume in HongKong and knows Dan & Rye—shout out!) was spinning, but I never thought that a guest DJ was enough to bring in a crowd of this size.

I quickly plowed my way through the undulating crowd to the side of the DJ booth. I saw DJs Toy and Brian and greeted them with a hug. Brian, sporting an Abu Sayaffish scarf and a fabulous bag (don’t ask me about bags, I just know he sports only fabulous ones, the kind whose price tag can feed a small orphanage), leaned close to my ear and shouted, “Happy ALMULA! Happy ALMULA!”

I guess his rebel-esque scarf made his greeting sound like he was celebrating a corruption of the Ramadan.

“What?!” I shouted back, with matching exaggerated quizzical expression on my face to make sure he got my puzzlement. (In Bed, communication is better when done with an audio-video lock. Of course the best form of Bed communication is still body language; let your eyes—and fingers and lips and tongue—do the talking.)

“Happy ALMULA!” he shouted again, as if saying something repeatedly will explain things clearer. Obviously Brian was enjoying my cluelessness.

“AL-MU-LA,” he said, enunciating each syllable. “The ALabang-MUntinlupa-LAguna Clan of Guys4Men!” he finished his explanation with a flourish. His eyes were twinkling with the unspoken message: Fresh meat for you to take home and eat!

Oh.

Wow.

Really?

I looked around. Sure, there were kids (hey, at my age, majority of those who go to Bed are kids!), faces and some shirtless bodies whom I was seeing for the first time. Not that I have a photographic memory, mind you. But when you visit a place often, you instinctively develop a sixth sense for the familiar as well as the fresh faces. And in such places, fresh equals premium. And there were quite a few premium cuts in the crowd.

But I turned to Brian and said, “Oh no. No hook-ups for me tonight.”

“What?!” Taken aback, Brian paused from his dancing. “Why?!”

I smiled my widest and said, “Mahal ang toll fees ng Skyway eh!”

Brian’s hysterical laughter rose above the thumping music.