A Goodbye Letter to Conrado de Quiros

This is a goodbye letter to a Friend.

It's become a bit long because I fancy myself my Friend's soulmate.

The running joke between us, whenever I espied behavior I wasn't sure I approved of, was that I could write his autobiography —yes, autobiography— because I know him so well.

Meaning, he had better behave.

That would coax a chuckle out of him, plus the signature smirk that passed for a smile.

And I do know him well.

Through his bad years, when his moves were tentative, indecisive, juvenile, and through his good years, when his moves were certain, bold, adult, I was there.

Through the good failures and the bad triumphs, I was there.

Through the bad judgment and the inspired choices, I was there.

Yet, right now, I am not sure soulmate is a word I can use for us anymore, because I have not— I could not— see him in the last nine years, and nine years can be a lifetime.

Those are the nine years I've come to calling The Lost Years.

They are lost years—2014 to 2023. He was lost to the country. He was lost to friends. He was lost, I believe, even to himself.

A massive stroke felled him, and much that came after, failed him massively.

Suddenly, this man— whose every thought on everything that assuaged society or that assaulted it had been printed, broadcast, and anthologized to reach the millions hungry to make sense of it all— was nowhere.

No one knew what was going on in his mind.

Who knows?

Maybe my Friend, had he been surrounded by people of his choosing and surrounded by them often and regularly, would have remained interested in the world.

Maybe my Friend, always drawn to the bohemian life, had wrongly been deprived of stimulation from the unconventional, the untested, the unusual, pushing him into the abyss where he could no longer be reached.

Maybe my Friend, also always the vigilant subversive, understood that his freedoms were slowly being stripped from him until, one day, he found himself left with nothing to fight with or fight for.

Or, maybe my Friend simply needed more music in his life, that most constant of his passions, of which he never got enough, certainly not from those he wanted it from the most.

Or, just maybe, my Friend's mind could have been unlocked by means still untried.

He certainly had more going for him than the French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby who, following a stroke and coming from weeks of coma, completed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, with just the use of his eyes, the only part of him he could move and that he was trained to blink, until blinking unlocked the man inside.

Who knows?

Because I had not— I could not— visit my Friend, I remain as ignorant as his next best friends, the lot of them writers and musicians also deprived of visits, and thus were my Friend's thoughts weighed down, trapped inside a terribly thinning frame, never to surface again.

Conrado de Quiros, 2006, Baguio. Photo courtesy of friends.

Photo by COURTESY.

I console myself with moments from a friendship that goes back to the start of the '70s, when we were both annoyed citizens who just happened to write, until the mid-'80s, when we both became writers who just happened to be annoyed citizens.

From those moments grow other recurring moments.

My Friend is drinking beer— and eating steak at Borromeo's near the former Jusmag, in a garden, in the middle of the day.

He is drinking beer— and devouring sisig at Welcome Rotunda in a dive that bursts into life evenings, as the band belts out, "We are the champions, my friend. We'll keep on fighting till the end..."

He is drinking beer— in Ihaw Balot Plaza, and the boy serving up drinks has stacked up empty green case after empty green case on the cement floor at the foot the table. On a good night, the stacks reach the height of the table or higher, and that is just four guys consuming all that because I can only stand coffee and pineapple juice.

He is drinking beer— in Remembrances in Malate, in Mayrick's across UST, in Bistro '70s on Anonas, in Pook Luntian on Timog, in Conspiracy on Visayas Avenue.

If I hadn't fallen away from the drinking sessions, maybe because I was getting acidic from all the coffee and pineapple juice, I am sure I would have more dives in my list.

For sure, my Friend drank and ate heartily. For a long time, he was also a big carnivore. His appetites, one might say, were robust.

But what one could totally miss in all this is that he was so because he was basically shy.

He preferred the solitary activity, which is probably why he was good at chess.

It was at chess that our barkada Butch Hilario proved to himself that our Friend had a photographic memory.

See, at times they played blindfold chess.

Although Butch said that truth to tell, he kept his eyes open all the time. It was just our Friend who kept his eyes blindfolded.

Truth to tell again, Butch says, he never won a game. Eyes open or shut, our Friend won all the time!

Yes, my Friend is shy.

So shy that he simply could not shoot the breeze unless he was a little under the influence, and the more breeze he had to shoot, the more influence he wanted to come under.

Otherwise, he was incapable of small talk.

He would just sit alone, his face pasted with the smirk that passed for a smile.

But yet, he was not at all all serious, not the whole entire day anyway.

When he was out enjoying his music, which was every chance he could get, he wanted to be left alone, please.

But he was famous, and it nearly always happened that in the pub, a fan, recognizing him, would invite himself to his table and debate with him, usually about politicians.

He hated that.

It disturbed his peace— a peace he always got from music.

Leave him with his hard rock. And his jazz, especially his jazz; he could keep jazz guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli's music going in his car, for months!

He also connected to protest songs and was friends with lots of activist singers. He more than tolerated pop.

And, he played classical guitar, although he would just as easily riff the chords of "When I'm 64" and "One Note Samba."

But more and more during The Lost Years of 2014 to 2023, he turned to '60s music, to peaceful rhythms, to Crosby Stills and Nash.

Conrad, left, jamming with his younger brother Paul. Photo courtesy of friends.

Photo by COURTESY.

My Friend has been called all sorts of superlatives during the 23 years —1991 to 2014— when he wrote the column, "There's the Rub," in the editorial pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Nine years after he stopped writing, the tributes pouring in still do.

He has been called erudite, cosmopolitan, an intellectual, the greatest hard-hitting columnist bar none, a genius, the spokesperson of a generation, and that most common of adjectives thrown his way: brilliant.

Yet very few know that, for this once robust man with the once robust appetite, he has had many moments away from all the bombast.

I recall one in black and white. We are in Economia in Sampaloc, my home. He appears one quiet afternoon, tall, still too thin, single, and quite excited.

He tells me he's found the girl he would marry.

This is a big announcement for him.

He is not good with the ladies. He isn't smooth.

Born in Manila and raised in Bicol, he told the story that, as gleeful young boys in the province, they would hold hands and race bikes and think nothing of it.

He grew up in a time and place of abandon and innocence.

The only one to keep him following adult rules, particularly over grades, was his father, who died too soon.

He had come to Manila in his late teens only because he graduated valedictorian at the Ateneo de Naga, which came with the prize of an Ateneo de Manila University scholarship.

Now here he is in my house announcing a momentous event in his life.

We're soulmates, remember?

He is proud to say that the girl, whom he says has a famous family name, commutes via jeepneys, like he does, and is into piano, like he's into guitar.

What's more, he says, with the half smirk that passes for a smile, she is "pretty."

My Friend is big on pretty.

And that day, he doesn't know how good fortune could have smiled at him so.

Conrado de Quiros, 2008, Tower of Doom recording studio, Philippines. Photo courtesy of friends.

Photo by COURTESY.

We lose touch for many years.

I don't know how his writing is going, he doesn't know how mine is.

Then comes the moment my cousin Susan, exactly my age, dies at 30. I am looking at my old directory and find my Friend there. The number still works. He comes to the wake in a chapel in a quiet neighborhood in Banawe.

We have a chance to cover our pasts and presents.

Of the past, he brings up my arrest and interrogation in '74, the second year of martial law, when I was 23, and he, 22.

Timidly, and then in a rush, he asks if I had given up his name to my interrogators.

He says he had no one to ask and just needed to know if he had a dossier somewhere, so he could take precautions.

He knew that I knew that his mother, brother Paul, and he had, just months after martial law was declared in September 1972, rented an apartment that became the underground house of cultural activists.

The family fronted for the UG group.

It was no cushy life. It was life and death at every turn.

Any one of them could be shot, or worse —including his mother with the beautiful patrician features and the beautiful patrician name, Julieta Sotomayor de Quiros— even if she was kept in the dark so she could carry on under the regime like a regular widow with sons to raise.

But, first things first.

I told my Friend I never gave up his name or his brother's or his mother's, nor did anyone of those I was arrested with —Bienvenido Lumbera, Ricky Lee, Flor Caagusan, Bobby Tuazon, Cesar Carlos— through our 10 days of incommunicado and interrogation in Aguinaldo and close to our one year in prison in Bonifacio, as proof of which their apartment was never raided and he and family were never hauled to prison.

That gave him some peace.

Of the present, he says he was working for Adrian Cristobal.

Tentatively, and then in a rush, he explains that Adrian was adopting good writers out of work because of martial law, and giving them jobs.

Adrian, of course, worked for Ferdinand Marcos Sr. as speechwriter and spokesperson.

Conrado de Quiros, Times Square, New York. Photo courtesy of friends.

Photo by COURTESY.

This is where I catch up to a different moment.

I realize my Friend is a man who can live with two opposing worlds inside him, a man who can navigate his contradictions within because these are the cards the present has dealt him.

On the one hand, my Friend is roped in by his new role as head of the family to write sections of Notes on the New Society, a book officially authored by Marcos Sr. and is required reading in many schools and government offices.

On the other hand, he knows his path had once gone in the very opposite direction—and, verily, should again.

But lest anyone not know it, contradictions are something he understands more than anyone who might think to reproach him.

He is the kind to punish himself before anyone can even think to pick up the first stone.

He knows the side of right.

But, he is also the kind to become stuck in the bog.

One night, very drunk— I remember it was on one of those Broadway streets with the massive, scary gnarled trees— he suddenly throws open the car door and lets half his body out. I am driving, it's a brand-new car, and between answering to my father for any ugly dent and my drunken Friend spilling his guts on the pavement on streets known as haunting ground for the White Lady, I really don't know how I survive the night.

Getting his senses back, he slumps, says: "I could've been somebody. I could've been a contender."

It is Marlon Brando's line from On the Waterfront.

As Brando looks at his life's choices and its twists and turns, he knows he's written himself out of the big fight, out of the big race, out of the championship, and even further down, out of the list of contenders.

In those lines, my Friend sees his own life.

It is a strange night even for one who fancies herself a soulmate.

My Friend spoke too soon, of course.

He was 36 or 37 at the time. He was yet to rise to his greatest moments, but he did not— no one did— know it then.

The greatest moments when he, wielding the pen that never failed him, would become the eloquent observer of our crazy life, a rampaging pundit, a thorn on the side of the mighty, an angry citizen tapping into his gifts of lucidity and language to lead the charge of the righteous, four days a week through an unbroken 23 years, in the biggest newspaper in the land.

He would not just be a contender—he would be a champ.

Conrado de Quiros, coffee in place of beer. Photo courtesy of friends.

Photo by COURTESY.

I catch an important moment during those years.

There was a Sam's Diner on Quezon Blvd., with a catchy 3D logo that was half the face of a vintage car jutting out of the facade. The barkada liked hanging out there.

Open in the late hours, it was brightly lit, and everyone, including the waitresses, who by the way moved around in roller skates, were nice and friendly.

One evening there, we find out that one of the girls had been assaulted and murdered. A tabloid carried the news.

My Friend seethed inside.

We were all asking questions of the servers in the diner, and every detail they filled us with made my Friend's rage settle deeper and harder.

Then his column came out.

It asked the universe what it was that took the life of a girl going home late at night because her work required it, a girl who was a breadwinner hurrying home to rest legs that had been on skates all night.

The column stayed with me.

It was a tour de force in writing. It was a tour de force in empathy.

Through the 23 years that he wrote— of what pained ordinary people, of afflictions arising from the greed of the powerful, of the selflessness of overseas workers and tribespeople and church activists, of unforgiveable state abuse, of the beautiful and the kind and the generous in our midst— my Friend was rewriting his life.

He was making up, steadily, ploddingly, and knowingly, for the years he had gone in the other direction.

With every writing, he was lifting himself out of the bog.

Conrad de Quiros (second from left) with friend Sammy Santos (leftmost), and Conrad's brothers Emil (beside Conrad) and Paul. Photo courtesy of Sammy Santos.

Photo by COURTESY.

My Friend had both his head and his heart in his mighty pen. And then in his crusty typewriter, next in his bulky computer, and finally in his sophisticated laptop.

He was a writer with few equals, or none—and he knew it.

Once I said, "Look at these plagiarists putting their bylines on your thoughts."

And he said something he'd use time and again to rile me whenever I felt protective: "Forget it. There's more where that came from."

Wow, ang humble, ha. There would go the smirk that was a smile that was also contrition not expressed.

As for his penchant for praising females— from movie stars to party leaders to civil libertarians to models— largely because they were beautiful, I'd shake my head.

I told him that, with the physically beautiful, he was really quick to assign virtue and rather slow to find fault.

I'd add, Wow, hindi ka mababaw, ha. Paano na nga yung autobiography?@@#?

And there would go the smirk that was a smile that was also contrition not expressed.

And, it is true. Over many of life's moments, my Friend has not always been exemplary.

He can get stuck with his views, listen only to himself, believe he's got all the answers. He can be downright stubborn.

This is particularly so with matters of health, his health.

My Friend has had problems with his lungs since he was young. On a barkada trip to Pangasinan, we drove over rice grains drying on the highway. Soon, he had difficulty breathing.

The car windows had been down, and he'd inhaled stuff that assaulted his lungs. No one else was affected.

His problems with uric acid came later in life, but often did damage.

He used to say he knew more about gout than the doctor he went to who just kept prescribing Colchicine, which he took a lot of anyway, and which, when his son was a toddler, he'd made the boy ingest by mistake, rendering the little one obedient throughout the morning.

Anyway, whenever he took one too many salmon appetizers from silver trays at ritzy events, in the next days, his toe or ankle or knee or elbow or finger was sure to flare up, something that became his lifelong misfortune.

Then, given his many lifelong medical problems, he began to believe he had the smarts to self-diagnose.

A barkada, the musician Rey Abella, began calling him Dr. de Quiros, to which he responded with his signature smirk, even as he continued to believe he had the answers.

Funny thing is, there is a good side to stubbornness.

It makes for courage.

He once said about his children that if the state ever did them harm, he could kill. He was not speaking figuratively, and he said it with such a quiet intensity, I believed him.

He could, for his children.

He could, if it meant standing his ground for them.

He knew his ideas were hated by parties and personalities he railed against, but did it stop him?

Some YouTubers went to the trouble of creating animation that drew him as a fallen jedi, because once he'd said something along the lines of "Hacienda Luisita is proof of the failure of Edsa," following the routing that protesting hacienda workers got from the state, and now here he was calling for "PNoy for President."

Enemies of PNoy made it appear that the change of heart was in exchange for his older brother Emil being named SSS chief and on account of his daughter Miranda working for the "yellowed"— the YouTubers' word, not mine— ABS-CBN.

Did any of that stop my friend? Did he fritter away his fame in safety and comfort? Did he back off?

No, he did not.

It took fate to do that.

And so, we come to this moment.

The moment when we honor this literary journalist, this unbroken warrior, this fatigued servant, this angry citizen— because he is all that; but more than this, because here is a man who did his damndest best with his gifts, bountiful and luminescent, the likes of which we may not see in a long time.

Sleep, my Friend.

You've earned every moment of rest for every moment you were great I have caught and for every moment I have yet to catch.

From: Pep