Online Journal 10: Jerry Gracio’s Bagay Tayo

“Love at First Sight”, “Kwento”, and “Pitbull” are a series of short stories that add up to make a bigger, more plot-packed picture. Through every story, we get to hear from Jerry’s point of view as he narrates the story of how he met Pitbull and how their love prospered.

We start off with Love at First Sight which I think is a really good opening because we really get to have a sense of how the writer narrates or writes the story. Gracio seems to navigate towards a more humorous writing tone, perpetually sprinkling some funny lines and jokes here and there. A scene that I found to be extremely funny was the scene in Pitbull where he was expounding on his “ideal type”. The dialogue was clever, making me wonder how much of it is real life and how much was pure witty story writing.

Gracio’s voice was far from dry too, I can really see the effort in trying to evoke romanticism in his own kind of way. It gave Jerry more personality as opposed to just being a one-dimensional being. Adding on to the tone once more, as a reader, it really feels like Jerry knows his partner well. It felt as though Jerry already has a deep sense of understanding when it comes to Pitbull but at the same time, it’s not too revealing in the sense that we as readers have nothing left to expect from the story. I love the structure of these three stories because it felt like a bigger picture was really unfolding before my very eyes. For instance, in Love at First Sight, we were informed that Pitbull had run away from home but it is not until the next story, Kwento, that we get to have a deeper understanding of the reasons behind his action.

Iyong dapat sana ay isang araw lang na pakikitulog,
umabot ng 13 taon.
Minsan, tinanong ako ni Pitbull kung na-love at first sight
ba ako sa kaniya. Sabi ko, hindi.
E ano, sabi niya?
“Na-in love ako sa k’wento mo, hindi sa ‘yo.”
Pero siyempre, hindi iyon totoo. Bahagi lang iyon ng
buong katotohanan.

I also really like this ending conversation in the first story because I think the lines “Pero siyempre, hindi iyon totoo. Bahagi lang iyon ng
buong katotohanan.” really parallel to what I said earlier about having a bigger picture unfold as the story progresses.

The most prominent use of rhetorical technique in the three short stories came towards the end or the last one, Pitbull, where we learn that the nickname Pitbull came from Jerry’s sibling likening Mong to the dog breed pitbull due to his “pitbull-like” characteristics, most notably him being laging galit and mapag-bantay. This analogy earned Mong another nickname which he ended up approving Jerry of calling him that after having despised the same nickname earlier.

I have to say however that I didn’t really like Pitbull as a character. In my opinion and from what I can read, he has tendencies to be emotionally manipulative and dump his trauma onto Jerry just to stop them from breaking up. I find that really toxic and his further scene depicting him being jealous of some random guy in a mall doesn’t really redeem his character any further for me. Acting so jealous and possessive is not a cute look anymore, we’re way past the need for emotionally fragile men in our lives.

But even if I have these thoughts about Pitbull, it is still Jerry’s choice to still love him in the end because I am only a reader, a spectator in their relationship. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be with someone like Pitbull. But I guess the beauty of love comes in the differences in our understanding of it. Jerry might get him and I might not. That’s his love to take. My feelings towards Mong shouldn’t inherently be Jerry’s feelings as well. We love who we love. We get our hearts broken, we shed tears, and soon we get back up again because hey, there are a billion more people in the world. Who knows what’s up there for us?