A week ago gorgeous superfriend Cheng M. and I went out to this tiny place called Caffeine Addict where some boring band was playing and boring people, the type of people who send forwarded messages in Friendster, crowded the place. Luckily we got our own tiny table without even waiting (thanks to Gasul-carrying buff no-name waiter; you are all free imagine yourselves sleeping in his arms on a stormy Baguio night) , big enough to put all our drinks into but too tiny for our handbags. Behind our table was The Couch.

It isn't the world's loveliest couch, it didn't even look expensive. IKEA 1995-ish actually, but I was perishing to move to the couch area because you can’t do mahjong or any other fun activities on our tiny table. I wanted much space because I love laying things on tables, like ashtrays and boxes of cigs and empty plates and maybe maps or floor plans. I imagined us together, Cheng and I, sitting like royalties majestically watching a horse race, on The Couch. While on The Couch, I thought, it'd be ideal to throw darts at people who stare at us, or slap stupid waiters who give us the wrong orders. The Couch is that night’s throne of power. And of all Fun Things.

So I eyed the couch as if it was the land of dreams and non-stop sex; I guarded it with my eyes, I planned to kill anyone who will take it from us. After their probly first round of drinks, the boring people who sat on the couch decided to just leave and watch TV at home instead (I saw it in their bored eyes). And then The Couch was ours.

At first I was silent, Cheng was telling me something about the band but I was half-listening. In my mind I was carefully working on plans during our short stay in The Couch. Should I lie down, I thought, or should I sit properly (Cheng brought her feet up on The Couch), should I call friends to come over and enjoy The Couch with us? The band’s first set of songs is almost over when I finally decided to just sit down, like a normal person, on The Couch, because I can’t take-off my shoes and sit ala Cheng. We were having a grand time, Cheng drank a lot and I since I don’t drink much, I drank little, haha. Until the invasion of The Couch.

Two girls, who were in Genevieve Gozum-like outfits, holding steaming mugs of coffee close to their chests, sat on our couch. Airplanes and pilots ask permission to land. Boyfriends during 3^rd-dates ask permission to ask. I remember asking permission from my mom when I was young if I could use drugs, and although she said NO, the thing is, at least I asked. But these two awful girls, my friends, sat on OUR couch, as if we were in the park and the couch was labeled “For Trashy Coffee-Drinking Girls Too” They could have made smoke signals from their steaming coffees to tell us that they wanted to share The Couch with us. But they did not. Instead they sat there, enjoyed the music while Cheng and I, grew silent for a moment, planning our next move. “I swear to God if these girls are gonna sing along the next song im gonna go grab their boobs off their chests and turn them into bloody play doh” I thought to myself, waiting for Cheng to say something. (The girls were lucky because the next song was some instrumental rendition of Feeling Good or Feel Good or whatever song). Cheng started to whisper her thoughts, some are violent and some are, well, normal (Tangina taktakan ko ng abo yang kape nila eh).

Cheng and I decided to reclaim our territory in the classiest way possible, that is, stretching our legs wide open until the next girl had to sit on the arm of the couch instead because we were occupying the whole couch already. We pretended that we needed the space to stretch our arms for warming up purposes. And I decided that my jacket deserved a chance to sit on the couch too, and my other stuff too and Cheng’s too, until the couch become crowded and the trashy girls, like Bush invading Iraq, at last, felt the need to leave us alone, Cheng and I, and OUR couch.