“Putang Ina! Move your car to the left!” I was seething mad at the idiot student driver blocking the gate out of Ateneo de Manila University. He had bumped the chain link fence with his shiny yellow Porsche and sat in the driver’s seat like a scared puppy. I got out of the car and into the rain and tore open the driver’s side of the Porsche. It slammed into the fence again. The kid gave a frightened squeal. I grabbed him by the collar and shook him. “Move your car—“ I let go abruptly as the guard put a hand on my shoulder and told me to go back to my car. He got into the driver’s seat himself and moved the stupid bee of a car to the side. I got into my Honda and amidst a chorus of car horns skidded into the traffic of Katipunan.
I stepped on the accelerator and pressed the horn several times. A thousand answering horns coupled with angry shouts roared in the air. I swerved past a tricycle. The driver cursed me loudly. I reached the U-Turn slot, ignored the Men in Blue flagging me down. I needed to get to Makati.
When she called me I was half-way through a make-up math class. It was 8:30 in the evening. She was slurring, sobbing, hiccupping, but then, that’s usually her language now. All I knew was that she was in Divino’s bar along Makati Avenue. The rest of the story I’ll hear from her later.
It wasn’t like I knew her for a long time. I met her just a few months ago at a party in the upper district of Metro Manila. I went out for a smoke in the parking lot. Her head was in the bushes, vomiting her guts out. Out of pity, I went to her. I recognized her as a girlfriend of a friend. I recognized her as one of the many pretty girls that walked around school. I asked if she was ok, she instantly put her hands on my chest and her face on my neck. She smelled like stale food and gin and her hair was wet from her own vomit. I put her arms around my neck and walked her back inside. I looked for Paolo, last time I knew they were together.
Paolo drew back visibly when I sat the girl down on the chair beside him.
“Shit. Is that Clara?”
“Your girlfriend.” I pointed out.
“Pare, she smells like shit.” He stood up and walked away. “You take her home. You’re a fucking gentleman right? She lives in Alabang. Ask around for Villavicencio.” Paolo laughed as he turned away.
A fucking gentleman.
So I drove her home, and so I met her. Drunk, vomiting, smelly Clara Villavicencio. All she ever seemed to do was party and drink, party and drink. Get high. Get screwed by one guy after another. Difficult as it may seem to imagine, she loved every single one of those guys. She gave out her heart bit by bit and threw up her soul little by little.
And I became the bestfriend. And like all the clichés I was the bestfriend who cared and was never cared for back. But in Paolo’s words, I’m a fucking gentleman.
Clara loved guys who treated her like shit. She craved for them hitting her a few months into the relationship. She loved it when they blew smoke down her throat or poured beer down her blouse. She loved it when she was left to open the car door for herself. It was part of the drama of love, she said. Love isn’t love when there is no pain. So I watched the pain of her love as night after night she sold her soul for an ounce of faux amore from the guys.
I tried to interfere countless times. I’ve broken the nose of so many guys that my own knuckle was permanently dislocated. It seemed like a metaphor for myself. That dislocated piece of bone that still kept hitting at Clara’s impenetrable wall. I tore away the cigarettes from her lips and the bottles from her hands. I’d have done it forever but then one day she informed me of my nothingness. Of me being the nobody.
“Putang Ina. Who the hell do you think you are? You’re nobody, nothing in my life. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Then later that night, she’d call me up, and I’d pick her up, like always.
But I stopped interfering. I became a bystander to her ruin. Well, the bystander who picked up the pieces of the ruin and drove them home every night. Being Clara’s friend was like watching a figurine fall and break on the floor. I picked up the pieces, the sharp edges wounding my own hands, and I lay them all on the table gently—only to have some other guy sweep them off in a second and scatter them to the floor again.
I wiped the vomit off her face and washed it off her hair. I didn’t yell at her or hit her or even cared if she puked all over my car. I opened the doors for her. I picked her up in the middle of god-knows-where in the middle of god-knows-what-hour-of-the-night. I hit the bastards who hurt her. I listened when she talked about how all guys are jerks, except you of course, except you. You’re a gentleman.
Then why not the gentleman?
Why not the guy who actually did give a damn about her?
And as I drive Clara home, a bruise on her cheek, beer on her dress, sleeping soundly in the passenger’s seat, I ask her silently; Why not the gentleman? Why the fuck not the good guy?
Author's note: Putang Ina is a tagalog swear word. It seemed fitting because of the setting of the story.
I absolutely loved it, and there isn't much to critique on it. One thing I would do, though, is put a little bit more description in your story. It would make the story better and more understandable. 
