Take
the time when I was the object of his good-natured mischief. Some
few years ago, as I was quietly going about my business, a press release
appeared on the front pages of some newspapers declaring in ringing terms
"Jerry Barican's" complete and uncritical endorsement of the Alsa
Masa movement in Davao, which you may recall was an anti-Communist
vigilante group.
I
was apoplectic. Although I had grown to loathe communism and it's honey-tongued
apologists, I believed in the rule of law. Besides, I had never issued
any statements nor had any intention of doing so. As luck would have
it, I happened to be in Hong Kong on a business trip when the bit of news
was faxed to me. Fortunately, I thought to myself, I was having lunch
with Gerry Gil that very day at the Foreign Correspondent's Club (Gerry
was then working in Hong Kong) and could ask him for his sage advice.
This he generously gave and I acted upon it.
It
was only after I had returned to Manila, thought about the circumstances,
and analyzed the problem that it gradually dawned on me that there was
only one possible suspect of the prank: Gerry Gil. At our next meeting
months later, laughing almost to the point of tears, I accused Gerry of
having set the whole thing up. He never fully owned up to it (it
doubled the fun leaving me with some doubt) and only during the wake did
I discover that indeed, Gerry had admitted authorship of the prank to our
friends.
There
was a time, under martial law, when Gerry spent hours writing letters.
He didn't just write them, he composed entire life histories. He
invented personas. In one instance he wrote, under an assumed name,
a series of letters attacking Jolly Benitez, which he took care to properly
post. Then he would, using another name, reply vigorously to his
own letters, in a running debate.
To
achieve this, he was careful to log it all on disk, so that even his styles
and facts would be consistent. This particular exchange ended when
the anti-Benitez writer triumphantly revealed in a letter that the pro-Benitez
writer was a fake, because he had gone to the purported address of the
writer and no such place existed.
The
last word, however, belonged to the pro-Benitez writer, who responded that
if "you were defending Jolly Benitez, wouldn't you also fake your address?"
After this, I learned never to trust the letters section entirely.
Gerry taught us both how to revere the press and how to distrust it.
His friends were the principal victims of his jokes but never, ever was
there a hint of malice. Gerry dished it out to those who deserved
it or could take it. He was the Menchen of our time and place.
Irreverent, devastatingly witty, profound, scrupulously fair.
All
his friends will miss those one-on-one dinners with him, when we could
lay it all out and know that we had a sympathetic, discreet, and wise listener
across the table.