Planet Panic

by Pam Pastor

  I tried to call the front desk, there was no answer.

  I got dressed quickly, even managing to put on my watch.

  With trembling fingers, I typed a quick email to Jill who was busy building a Lego Fire Station set with Giff. I would have laughed at the coincidence but I was too freaked out to make the connection.

  I poked my head outside the door and saw groggy-looking guests still in their sleepwear, peeking out of their rooms, seemingly unsure of what to do.

  I remembered how, just a few years before, my friends and I were watching Kick-Ass in a Shangri-La Mall cinema when we were asked to evacuate because a fire had broken out in the basement.

  I knew I needed to stay as calm as I did that night. I closed my door and did what the disembodied voice told me: I waited.

  Soon, there was another announcement: “An emergency response team is on the scene.”

  And another: “It was a false alarm. The fire department has asked the hotel to reset the alarm.” Relief washed over me. I changed my clothes again and forced myself to fall asleep, heart still pounding. I had to be up in a few hours for a series of interviews.

  The next morning, I found out that the whole thing was the work of an inconsiderate prankster. I felt like hunting him down and punching him in the balls but I had work to do.

  March 5, 2013

  Easter eggs and cheeseburgers

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be wearing a cheeseburger on my head.”

  The hesitation came a day late, after I had purchased the offensive hat, while I was already standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, ready to join New York’s Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival.

  Unlike the Halloween parade where the people in costume are separated from onlookers by barricades, at the Easter Parade, everyone mingled—people wearing their Sunday best, kooky creative types, New Yorkers, tourists, photographers and then us—a very confused hat-wearing trio plus one.

  We made plans to go to the parade to watch people and take photographs. I did a little research and found out that people wear all kinds of headgear at the parade and thought we should, too, just for fun.

  The day before the parade, as we were getting ready to leave Coney Island, we spotted a rack of hats for sale. Jill grabbed a giant beer mug and put it on her head. Then she changed her mind and went for a furry blue Dr. Seuss-inspired hat. Janna snapped up a giant foam cowboy hat. One look at the rack and I knew which one I wanted: the cheeseburger.

  I’ve always loved any excuse to wear a costume. In the past, Jill and I have joined New York’s Halloween Parade dressed as Care Bears and giant bees, chasing around people dressed as flowers. We never felt embarrassed, not even when we rode subway cars packed with people in regular clothes.

  But this time was different. Because people were dressed in their Sunday best and they were wearing lovely hats with bunny accents, little chicks and Easter eggs. The hats looked painstakingly handcrafted. They looked Easter-perfect. And we just looked … weird.

  The people didn’t seem to care, though. The minute we put our hats on, they started taking our pictures. We awkwardly posed while Janna muttered, “What is happening?” and “Is this how Justin Bieber feels? I don’t like it.”

  Eventually, she loosened up, hamming it up for her numerous photographers, even throwing her hands up in the air for some pictures. “You really go big in Texas,” one old man told her.

  Soon, I was having so much fun cheerfully greeting people “Happy Easter!” and chasing after well-dressed elderly couples, babies camouflaged as bunnies, Hula-hooping ladies, and dogs and dog owners in matching clothes that I started to forget I was wearing a giant burger.

  I only remembered when people stopped us for more pictures, when tourists laughed and pointed at my head and when kids with all kinds of accents grabbed their parents’ arms while shouting, “Hamburger!” or “Cheeseburger!” and, in one case, “Look, a sandwich!”

  “This is an Easter burger, damn it!” I kept telling Jill and Janna who cracked up every time people laughed at me.

  “Look, my lettuce is blowing in the wind,” I said and they started laughing again.

  “Do you want fries with that?” Again, laughter.

  But my fast-food hat wasn’t the only funny thing at the parade.

  There was the old man who was being dragged by his wife to see the people in costumes. He said, clearly amused, “Why would you go in there? You don’t have a hat.”

  A gentleman in a powder-blue suit was carrying two decked-out Chihuahuas. Naturally, tourists started posing with them. He seemed to enjoy it—until people started petting his babies. “Don’t touch the dogs! Don’t touch the dogs!” he scolded them.

  One lady danced around, turning her jack-in-the-box-like hat’s crank until a little Jesus doll popped out. “Pop goes Jesus!” she hollered.

  She did this over and over again as crowds gathered around her. At one point, a woman asked her, “Did you make this?”

  She said, “No, I bought it at Macy’s.” I love sarcasm on a Sunday.

  And then there was the creepy and colorful wizard-slash-fairy who looked like a scary cross between the Penguin and a Fabergé egg. I laughed when I heard one mom tell her kid, “No, honey, that’s not Humpty Dumpty!”

  We left the parade to eat and I stashed the cheeseburger in my backpack. But after lunch, as we walked down Fifth Avenue again, Jill and Janna whipped out their hats, telling me, “You have to wear yours, too!”

  I grudgingly took it out and put it on. The pointing and laughing started again. But thankfully, we were already walking away from the parade. A few blocks later, my lettuce waved its last goodbye and this Easter sandwich retired.

  April 21, 2014

  The jumper

  “Holy shit, holy shit!”

  I was busy staring at my phone screen but Jill’s voice made my head snap up. I craned my neck to see what she was looking at.

  A man standing on a New York subway platform just a few feet from us was dumping his things onto the floor. First his bag, then his jacket, then his wallet and his gadgets. They clattered as they hit the ground. Then he jumped off the platform and onto the train tracks.

  Holy shit.

  The subway signs flashed in my head. “141 people were struck by trains in 2012, 55 were killed.”

  I stood, frozen, my heart pounding. Oh my god. A suicide attempt? I can’t believe I’m about to see someone die.

  “Hey man, don’t do it!” I turned around and saw a guy calling out to the man on the tracks.

  “What?!” the jumper answered, annoyed and indignant. “I dropped something.”

  I burst out laughing.

  But the other guy wasn’t convinced. “What was it you dropped? A charger?”

  The jumper held up whatever it was that he picked up and clambered back onto the platform.

  The 6 train arrived, we all rode the same subway car and pretended nothing had happened. The jumper buried his face in a book and the rest of us tried to bury our suspicions of attempted suicide.

  April 28, 2014

  Ramen for foreplay

  The plan was to do laundry but because it was cold and raining in New York and the thought of lugging dirty clothes across the street was unbearable, we said, forget laundry, let’s nap.

  And when we woke up with a pounding headache after sleeping too much and saw that it was still raining, we said, forget laundry, let’s eat ramen.

  We bundled up—and when I say bundled up, I mean I put on two shirts, jeans over my leggings, a cardigan, a knit sweater, a bubble vest, a scarf and my incredibly warm circle knit scarf.

  I was wearing so many layers that I looked and felt like a mascot.

  I may have overdone it, I thought, because as we walked to the subway, people were staring. They looked sleek in their hoodies and jackets and I looked like Stay Puft.

  I really had overdone it because once inside the train, I began to overheat. All the layers made it difficult for me to breathe so I took off the s
carves and the bubble vest and dumped them in my backpack.

  It’s a bit of a walk to Totto Ramen. On a dry day, twelve minutes are a breeze but when it’s raining, they’re an eternity, especially when you’re wrestling with an umbrella.

  I cannot say this enough: I hate umbrellas. They’re so much work. I never know what to do with them once they’re wet. I would usually choose getting soaked over bringing an umbrella but Jill gave me her special death stare—the kind that can melt the Titanic iceberg—so I grudgingly brought one.

  It was four fifty-five when we reached Totto Ramen. it was still raining and we realized with horror that they wouldn’t open until five thirty.

  Crap.

  Were we really willing to stand in the rain for thirty minutes? Did we want ramen that much?

  A Japanese man arrived. “No! Closed?” he asked when he saw the sign.

  “Yup, they open at five thirty,” we said.

  But there was another sign—Totto Ramen has a new branch just a couple of blocks away and it opens at four.

  “Should we go there?” Jill asked.

  “I don’t mind,” Janna said.

  We started walking, with Jill and Janna ahead of me. My stupid umbrella wouldn’t open so I walked for a block with my scarf wrapped around my head and the useless umbrella dangling from my hand.

  Jill ran back, grabbed the umbrella from me and opened it with ease. Just call her the umbrella whisperer.

  We entered Totto Ramen, dumped our umbrellas, grabbed a table and peeled off our layers.

  We ordered three paitan ramens with pork, no onions, no scallions, extra eggs plus extra corn for me.

  We were already eating when the waitress sat a couple at the table next to ours.

  And when I say next to ours, I mean they were just six inches away.

  “Just like Hong Kong, right?” the guy said.

  “Date!” Janna said immediately. Their awkwardness made it clear.

  The girl looked like a pre-makeover Tai—you know, Brittany Murphy’s character in Clueless. She was totally Tai—curly hair, bright eyes, scuffed shoes.

  The guy, Janna swears, looks like Ogie Alcasid. But Jill says Janna is crazy. I’m not sure. I never saw his entire face because he was right beside me.

  I didn’t see him but I heard him.

  I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I really didn’t. But they were so close that I couldn’t help but overhear everything they said.

  They started talking about the guy’s facial hair. Apparently, it was his first time to grow a moustache.

  It was puny as far as moustaches go but Tai was totally into it.

  “Facial hair is hot these days, right? I like it. I mean, if fashion states that you should do something other than put a razor against your delicate face in the morning and you can do something else in the morning, I’m all for that. You have my two thumbs up.”

  Delicate face? What? This girl totally had the hots for Ogie.

  They went on and on about facial hair and even started discussing The Hulk’s moustache. At one point, Tai called Ogie “a rogue man” but Ogie did not understand what she meant. They only stopped the moustache discussion when the waitress not-so-subtly reminded them that they needed to order.

  “I already know what I want!” Ogie announced grandly, while Tai scrambled to read the menu.

  He ordered the extra-spicy ramen with bamboo shoots, egg and corn.

  She ordered the chicken paitan ramen.

  “Go on, get some toppings, they marinate the bamboo shoots here really well,” Ogie said.

  So the girl ordered bamboo shoots “and maybe an egg.”

  They talked about the Japanese soda he was drinking. He let her take a sip.

  Their food arrived. Tai took one taste of her ramen and said, “Mmm, mmm. I woke up today and said, ‘I want chicken noodle soup.’ And I got it. And this is fancy.”

  She started talking about her good friend “who is losing his mind.”

  “A bunch of people in the East Coast—well, not in New York—are trying to live cashless,” she said.

  “You mean he squats?” Ogie said, a little snootily.

  “Oh no, it’s with permission. He’s an artist.”

  It was a very long story. Her friend went to Mexico, met a woman, fell in love and got married but, because he doesn’t have money, he is having a hard time trying to bring his wife to the States.

  Tai seemed to find it romantic, but Ogie didn’t seem impressed.

  They moved on to another topic: Tai’s trip. She said she was just going to be in New York for ten days and wouldn’t have time to see all her friends.

  Ogie cleared his throat. “Well, thank you for making time.”

  Tai blushed, “Oh of course! I love this! This is great!”

  And then they started talking about how they were going to Ogie’s apartment after.

  “I did some spring cleaning. I took some of my books out of storage to show you,” he said.

  “Ooh, I can’t wait to see your apartment.”

  It wasn’t dinner, it was foreplay. The sexual tension was so thick I could poke it with my chopstick.

  “Oh yeah, someone’s getting laid tonight,” we nodded in agreement.

  I turned back to my ramen. It was good.

  May 2, 2014

  The potential kidnapper had the face of Natasha Richardson and the bob of Anna Wintour

  Jill missed out on Janna’s stalking adventure so over breakfast, she said, “Let’s go to the GLAAD Awards.”

  She had another reason for wanting to go—her cousin, who is from another state, was going to be at the event and she was hoping to run into him.

  Janna, who had been talking about wanting to see the rest of the cast of Orange Is the New Black at the awards, said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  Then she changed her mind. “No, can we just go home? My NBA team’s playing tonight.”

  The she changed her mind again. “Okay, let’s go, I want to see Laura Prepon.”

  But first, Jill and I had another event to go to. When that was done, we realized that Janna had changed her mind again. She and her grandma had gone home.

  “We’re still going,” we texted her.

  “Bring back halal!” she replied.

  It was 10 p.m. and when we arrived at the Waldorf Astoria, I knew instantly that spotting celebrities wouldn’t be as easy as it had been at the Time 100 gala.

  One, the red carpet wasn’t visible from the outside. Two, with the exception of two autograph scalpers, we didn’t see any other potential stalkers standing around. Three, the doormen were intimidating—so intimidating that even the scalpers seemed scared of them. Four, we were going to have to wait outside. Five, it was cold. Six, it started to rain.

  “Let’s go home,” Jill said, after minutes of waiting. We saw a number of gorgeous gay men but no one we recognized. There was no sign of the Orange Is the New Black cast, no sign of Jill’s cousin either.

  There was only one other familiar face there—an elderly female photographer with dyed red hair. She had also been at the Time 100 gala.

  “Let’s go,” Jill said again.

  “We can’t,” I said. It was still raining, and we didn’t have umbrellas.

  “Excuse me, do either of you have a cigarette?”

  I looked up from my phone and was surprised to see a middle-aged lady in a black pantsuit talking to us. Her face was Natasha Richardson-ish, her hair cut in an Anna Wintour bob.

  “No, sorry,” Jill and I said. Neither of us smoke. I have never touched a cigarette in my life.

  “It’s good that you don’t smoke. But I do. And I want one,” she said in a sing-song way.

  Jill and I laughed. This lady is tipsy, I thought.

  She spotted a girl smoking near us. “Can I please bum one from you?” she asked.

  “Oh sure.” The girl handed her a cigarette.

  Natasha Wintour told the girl, “You just earned a ticket to heaven.”

  The girl
laughed and Natasha started smoking.

  I inched away, hoping that Natasha would talk to the girl instead. But she wasn’t done with us.

  “Are you from here?” she asked Jill.

  “No,” Jill replied.

  “Where are you from?”

  “The Philippines.”

  “Holy shit, that’s fucking far!”

  She turned to me. “Are you from here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “The Philippines, too.”

  “Whoa. So are you guys just here on a whim? Just for vacation?”

  “Yup,” Jill said.

  “How are you liking it?”

  “We love New York,” Jill said.

  “Is it your first time here?”

  “No,” we said.

  “So you have it down?”

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  Then she leaned over conspiratorially, whispering, “Do you know what’s happening here tonight? It’s the GLAAD Awards. Do you know what GLAAD is? It’s the gay and lesbian … whatever. It’s a gay thing. George Petaki is here. Naomi Watts …”

  I thought, doesn’t she mean George Takei who was being honored at the event?

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Waiting for my cousin,” Jill said.

  “Do you want to go to the party? I can bring you in,” Natasha said.

  “Are we allowed to?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, you’re with me. It’s the after-party.”

  Was this lady one of the organizers? If so, why was she tipsy?

  “Do you want to meet George Petaki?”

  Was she George Takei’s agent? If so, why didn’t she know his name? Or did she really mean George Petaki?

  “Do you know George Petaki?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  “You know, from Star Trek.”

  Oh yes, she did mean George Takei.

  “Do you want to meet him? Do you want to meet the football player who just came out?”