Fifteen

Author's note: These chapters are NOT stand-alones...The story starts here.

Tick tock...1

July 4^th, this same year, 2008. We are celebrating here. And there are three reasons to celebrate. Mica is pregnant. I swear, it must have been the very first time we lay together. Mica is over the moon and Shara is ecstatic. But that is far from all. Lanie is also now pregnant, a fact I only became sure of a couple of days ago. The last is simply that it is the Fourth!

It’s been more than a year since the iPhone was released. The Apple stock has gained some in the year. It’s now over 24. Cisco is at 23. I mention it to George, and wonder if I should sell. He listens for bit, but he is also telling me I am a damned fool.

George is pointing my stupidity out to me as we enjoy a beer and a burger, while watching the girls play volleyball. The girls are fun to watch and I am looking at them, but I am not ignoring what George is saying.

George, I know you are right. But that’s only paper wealth right now. As to real wealth, we are not the wealthiest around here. There are massively wealthy Filipinos. Whether it is because of large fleets of ships that harvest tuna, or because they are corrupt politicians or government workers on the take, or they are essentially landed gentry who own huge tracts of farm land and have plantations, I am truly small potatoes.

Craig, you clueless fuck. OK, so granted all that, we stick out because we are foreigners. And all those folks you mention… they all travel with a retinue of bodyguards. Some actually do have private armies. And you? What do you have? One fucking guard at your front gate! … Your girls are still riding into town on motorcycles! … Use your brain, sometime in the future, you are going to become interesting to some folk who see dollar signs, not pesos, when they look at you.

Have you any idea how large an army I would need to protect us? Six of them are in college every day, for Pete’s sake. And they are not in the same class. Then, others, during the day, are out running errands and shopping. This just isn’t doable. I hear what you are saying, but I can’t see how I do it.

OK, I’ve said my piece. … I hear congratulations are in order again.

Excuse me?

Ara tells me you are going to be a daddy again twice over. Are you rejoicing or crying?

A little of both. It’s crazy, of course.

At least this place is big enough that space shouldn’t be a problem. … Did you ever provide Socoteco with the real plans for this house?

Now that makes me smile. No, I never set foot back in their offices once. When we had to pay for the replacement, permanent meter, and later when we returned the temporary one, Si2x took care of it. They have no idea what I built.

Do you have your occupancy permit?

Not yet. We have been inspected and I guess the city assessor is trying to figure out how much our tax will be. Rena has offered an incentive to the right person to keep the tax down in a reasonable range. We are waiting on that. Once the tax amount is established, I will pay that. I am told that other city folks come out and they will set the ‘fee’ I need to pay to get the occupancy permit. … You need another beer?

It takes close to the end of the year to get the tax issue resolved. I will pay what amounts to six hundred and fifty dollars a year in tax on this place. It just cost me a little less than one hundred dollars of sweetener to get that resolution. I am sure not crying about it.

The occupancy permit was a whopping two hundred dollars. Once again, I am not weeping.

Shara and Gladies are every day working on landscaping, but it requires helpers, as the property is too much for the two of them. I have been paying one hundred and sixty pesos a day for unskilled laborers when the girls need help.

Shara teased me yesterday that I need more girls to help out. That was not a welcome comment and I let her know what I think of adding anyone more. It just isn’t going to happen.

Today, my neighbor with the power pole on his land has come over. He has a problem. His wife has cancer and needs expensive treatments. He has PhilHealth coverage, but it won’t be enough. He wants to know if I would like to purchase three more hectares of land that abuts my property. It includes the land where my pole sits.

He needs money now, and so his asking price is thirty-five pesos a square meter, or a bit over a million pesos for the land. I like the guy, feel sorry for him and, sure, shit, why not. I call Trujillo and get the ball rolling. The land is currently listed as agricultural. Taxes on it are next to nothing. The land trust will get larger.

By the time Christmas 2008 arrives, Mica and Lanie are waddling around, deep into their pregnancies, and the land trust owns five hectares. I have leased out the three hectares to a farmer who is growing vegetables.

My apple stock has taken a big hit as it has lost six bucks a share from where it was eighteen months ago. Cisco stock is also down. The world economy is in the toilet. I have no idea if I will lose everything, but this is not the time to sell. I am waiting it out.

The money I have here seems OK and, while the economy here is not good, it is also not impacted by the worldwide freak-out that is enveloping the developed world. I watch what is happening and wonder, is this the end of the economic framework of worldwide banking? It is a scary time.

Here, the beggars are just as plentiful as ever. No more, no less.

Lyn, at age twenty-five, is now a licensed civil engineer. She has established her own company. So far, the projects are not huge, but she has picked up some work designing homes for three other expats. As she has an idea what they might like, it seems to be a good way for her to build her practice.

Lexi, at age twenty-one, is teaching high school English at the Lagao National High School. She is endlessly teasing me about the girls she is teaching and how I would just love to fuck them. All I can do is roll my eyes. That is all I need!

Jana is twenty-three, and has a job working for the city as a certified public accountant. She is involved with audits. She tells me that she is offered bribes at least once a week. She has been declining all offers, but her boss called her into his office and told her that if she didn’t start playing the game, she will be out of a job. I have advised her to quit, but she doesn’t want to quit. I expect she will be fired before the end of the year. It’s a good thing she doesn’t deal with Rena!

Dina is sixteen and little Mica is, of course, fourteen.

Socially, we rarely see Brian and Stefan. I see George at least once a month. A few other guys have come by the house but, for whatever reason, after maybe two visits they never come back. George tells me it is the difference in our economic situations. This place announces a level of wealth that makes the other guys feel uncomfortable.

It’s OK for me. I am not the most social of creatures, and the girls here have enough of a community among themselves that they are not clamoring for company.

My oldest boy, Oscar, is five years old. Jana’s Mia is four, as are Lyn’s Nita, Li2x’s Chamiya (Mi2x), May’s Alyssa (Sisa) and Si2x’s Analou (Lou). All the others are three years old or younger. But even now, Gladies and Shara are telling me that Mi2x and Sisa will have my children as per tradition. Every time I hear it, I tell them to knock it off, we have no such tradition.

It doesn’t help.

The house is everything I had hoped it would be. And, as we close out the year on New Year’s, I am firing off the type of rockets I have wondered about in the past. The girls are both proud that we can do so and scared of the rockets as they launch.

We have had one piece of sad news. Reina’s mother died two months ago. Reina was told it had something to do with the sale of drugs. But we know nothing more than that. As her mother died a pauper, Reina, with my support and encouragement, paid for the mortuary services and the interment. The woman might not have lived a dignified life, but at least her treatment after death was.

Please, let this just be a peaceful year. I can only hope 2009 brings a better answer to the economic crisis the world is in right now. It is scary.

There is, these days, less of a crush to get sack time with me. I am not complaining. Between school and the care for the young ones and their heightened interest in social media now that each of them has their own smartphone, the social fabric of the house has changed.

Most nights I am with Lyn, Lexi or Si2x and, while some nights it is two of them, there are no issues of which I am aware.

There have been some curious emails from old acquaintances from the States, wondering when I am returning. In each case my reply is simply that I have no reason to return and leave it at that. So far no one has pressed harder.

My world is stable, quiet, and I am at peace with the world around me. The year slips by.

As 2009 comes to a close, I am relieved that the economy, while still not good, does not seem like it will completely implode. There are, here, among the contingent of expats from the US, an almost universal and ugly racist hatred of the current US President.

As a good Irish Catholic Democrat from Boston, I don’t share those feelings. All I can say is that I am glad I don’t run into the US expats here very much, and if they don’t feel comfortable coming to the house here, all the better for me.

I note the stock market is showing signs of life. Cisco shares are back to where they were two years ago. So by my just being patient, I have survived the crisis. The big surprise this year is Apple. Today it has climbed to 29.83. My total Cisco shares are still worth twice the Apple shares, but that they are even that close is a surprise to me.

I think this iPhone thing has really made Apple rocket up. I bought the stock because I really believed the Macintosh would eventually make headway against that damned Microsoft Windows. It didn’t. I bet wrong on that. But I never would have guessed that Apple would come out with a music player and a cellphone. By essentially reinventing what they are as a company, Apple has taken what was a moribund company and brought it back to life.

GenSan is still an economic backwater. The conditions that I saw before are still largely as they were, but I note land prices are moving up. I don’t know why, as there doesn’t seem to be a reason I can put my finger on.

It’s another Christmas and New Year, as 2009 does come to a close. Financially, we are OK. Jana did get fired a week after she refused to resign and refused to take bribes. About six months ago, she got a job with one of the hospitals here, in their auditing department. So far, there are no offers of bribes, but she has run into some irregularities that she reported to the department head. I gather nothing has come of those reports.

Lyn has more projects under her supervision now. Some of them are far out of town, and she is only home about two to three nights a week. I am happy for her, but she doesn’t like being gone from Nita that much.

Lexi just will not stop teasing me about her students. I tell her that I think Dido would be far more interested in them than I am. Dido agrees, but Lexi isn’t biting on that. And so, almost once a week, you can hear me say, Christ, Lexi, isn’t fifteen enough?

And then her answer, Maybe not.

She has asked me a number of times to come visit her classes.

Lexi! Stop. You know damned well what happened the last time I visited Lagao National High School. Never again!

You may well ask, where do these conversations take place? Is it at the supper table? No, it is when Lexi is in bed with me, and my cock is nuts deep in her cunt, or when she has been giving me head and stops just before I am ready for the last run at the finish line. She will be stroking me, telling me how sweet and pretty some young girls are, and how I just have to meet them.

Lexi never does it when Si2x is in the room. But there are plenty of times when Si2x isn’t.

This is Christmas/New Year’s school break. Lexi is in contact with some of her students, the ones who are the most in need and the ones, as well, whose cunts she would like to see with me balls deep in. I am just not going to engage. But it does have the effect of blowing my nuts inside Lexi long before I ought to.

I don’t know how to explain it, but my life with the fifteen girls has become, in its own way, normal.

What I have been doing this past year is something that I haven’t mentioned yet. Lyn gets to hear things in her activities as an engineer, which she brings to me. These, at times, produce opportunities to profit.

We have been using the land trust to buy land where we believe the values will soon go up. Some of the purchases we are sitting on and can only hope. Others we purchase, and then sell for ten times the purchase price, only weeks after we made the purchase.

On the whole, as to liquidity, we are better than where we were before we made the first purchase, and we are also sitting on many hectares of land we have yet to move.

If nothing else, it gives me something to do and, in the process, we have been keeping Rena busy. In an odd way, maybe it’s a good thing that Jana isn’t working for the city, seeing as what Rena is doing every week for us over there.

Based on what Lyn is hearing, there will be a lot of development starting up here in the next few years. It makes no sense to me, but it is what it is. We will try to take advantage of what comes our way. In two cases, it has allowed Lyn to purchase properties that she has spec built commercial buildings on. We are in the infancy of those projects, but they show real promise.

Time slides by as we just continue to keep busy. Another year has passed. All fifteen of my girls are here as 2010 comes to a close.

I have been here almost eight years now. The youngest of my girls is sixteen. May is twenty-one and has completed her degree program to be a Vet. Li2x finished with her degree in IT last year.

We have nine of my children in a private school. They wear the little uniforms, and it’s a hoot to see them all dressed up. Mel is their driver, as she takes them to school and picks them up each day.

Lyn isn’t happy with the religious lessons the kids get at school, but Lexi keeps Lyn’s irritation somewhat mollified by suggesting they simply discuss their beliefs in front of the kids, and therefore undercut those lessons.

The fact that Lyn is gone a great deal is adding to her discomfort. She feels like she is losing touch with everything here, including me. I think she is overreacting. I make sure I am with her whenever she is home. And we talk almost every day via cellphone, discussing business issues.

Those issues are opportunities, and they have been coming fast and frequently of late. Lyn thinks it is all because of Manny Pacquiao. I have a hard time seeing how he can be the entire reason, but maybe I am missing something.

In any case, we are heavily invested in properties and our sales success at turning a good profit has been solid. On top of everything else, Lyn is becoming a successful engineer.

I note that we are seeing maybe a bit fewer beggars. Maybe I am imagining it. I hope not.

Jana is still at the hospital but, once again, she is seeing the corruption and seeing that no one is lifting a finger to end it. Lyn has been trying to convince Jana to come work for her. She needs someone to actually run the business end so Lyn can concentrate on the engineering. Lyn has also mentioned that she needs Li2x’s IT skills.

Lexi just won’t quit trying to tease me into fucking her students! What is with that girl?

And once again, as the year end closes out, I take a final look at the investments. Apple has jumped up to 46.5, making my investment worth over two and a half million dollars. I really think the Apple stock is driven by the iPhone. The Cisco stock is off quite a bit at 20.32; I have lost three million dollars in value. My best bet is that the Cisco stock is stuck in the malaise of the economy. All I can do is hope it comes back. I am not touching either.

§ § §

Tick tock...2