M.E., the partee-going engineer who lives in Ortigas and works in an IT company in Pasig City, gave my partee-going partner Tar ₱2,000.00 after he was told that Tar lost his job because the last time they partied, M.E. wouldn’t let Tar leave for four days, making him miss his work for an entire week.
₱2,000.00.
That’s the value of his remorse for destroying another person’s life.
But among partee-goers I know of, or have heard about, remorse is not exactly a big word being used, much more felt/undergone.
In partees, they’d all use together. Have “fun” abusing each other’s bodies. Then they all leave their sessions to live separate lives; each to his own to deal with the fallouts of the partee-ing – e.g. hospitalizations, quarrels with loved ones, paying of utang (debt) incurred to buy those drugs used by everyone, risk or actual jailing, and yes… loss of livelihood because – for a while there, while drugs run through their veins – the high was the priority, and everything else did not matter, particularly not some job to sustain oneself (and families) after the partee-ing is done.
The funny thing is how Tar described M.E.’s actuations; like “he couldn’t be bothered with the news”. And when handing the ₱2,000.00, he acted like “he didn’t want to talk about this anymore; it’s a ‘done’ issue for him since he paid for it already.” With ₱2,000.00.
That’s obviously just one of the facets of this issue.
Another is Tar himself, who noted the coldness of M.E., and yet – when M.E. messaged him after two weeks – he went straight back into the partee den of the remorseless drug addict. And this time, since he’s still unemployed anyway, he stayed longer, for five days… and counting.
Alas this is the world of partee-goers, where abuse in its many forms is what’s normal. So don’t expect “pity” or “heart” or “remorse” here; just expect to use and be used. This may be a bleak (and perhaps unfair) observation, but it’s what I’ve been seeing from this “world” that Tar has become part of.
And I suppose it will stay this way until realization dawns on partee-goers themselves. And until that happens, people like us – those who love partee-goers – will have to put up with this over and over and over again…
