antecoitus

When
I was younger, my mother had this constant urge to bribe me with shoe-money to
buy sexy fuck- me sandals. I stayed with my DM’s for two years and with
trainers for another two, they were comfortable and they afforded me clean feet
at the end of the day which I didn’t use to manage to have in sandals. I have
fat feet and I think I look absolutely undeserving of a second glance. Unlike
Librans who are predisposed to grace and attractiveness and Scorpions who ooze
sex appeal like a toothpaste tube with a hole, Sagittarian women are apparently
more masculine than most. The genderless look is a look I go for or maybe it’s
more appropriate to say— it’s the look I cannot seem to avoid. I used to
wonder (and believe me I like knowing more than wondering a thousand times
more) — Is it the way I walk or the way I skip when I’m extremely happy. Is
it the fact that I take on my guy friends’ challenge of unbridled jousting on
about any joke they want to throw at me, whether they are sexual, sexist or
simply stupid? Is it because I cut my hair, when having it long endows me a 75%
probability that I will automatically look like a woman, and a 25% chance of looking
like a hippie child/punk rocker. When I wake up each morning, I look at myself for
two whole minutes waiting for that ever elusive fertility goddess look to
miraculously appear. They told me that French fries go straight to the hips,
I’m overloaded with saccharides and yet my hips remain unperturbed.

I
wanted to look soft even if I know it is virtually as impossible as growing more
tantalizing breasts without the silicone implant. Women (or anyone of any
gender) who are beautiful and fragile looking are easier to forgive and easier
to do favors for. When you look like you can smack someone in the head with a
mere dagger look, even if you entice him with the sweetest gelato voice that is
3 octaves higher than Mariah’s limit, it won’t work. If you can say f*ck off
without having to raise your middle finger, if you can make a joke without fear
of stepping on their testicles, or if you laugh heartily without throwing your
hair to the side, smiling your sweet slightly flirty smile and putting a
kerchief to prevent people from seeing what you had for lunch — you can be
sure that men will think you are one of the guys, you’re in the friend zone,
you’re simply not the girl to bring home to momma to help with Christmas dinner
but… you’re really cool to just hang with.

When
I am not having any man hanging around me for more than chilling with a drink
or an occasional joint when they’re really depressed, I used to tell myself in
order to feel better, ‘ah they are intimidated by me, damn, that is the bane of
my existence – my independence, my fabulousness’. At the back of my head though
there’s this teeny annoying voice saying (as annoying as Kris Aquino’s
infotainment addiction – she thinks she’s royalty and that its actually public
service to announce to millions of viewers that she has VD) – ‘But what if the
reason is because I am simply challenged in the face value department?’

Why
do we hype beauty so much when it’s something which must be measured only with
a carefully chosen yardstick? How do we know what to hype? Why do some people
who think they’re beautiful bully other people who aren’t up to their
standards?

I
realized that a lot of women in Europe can make a lot of money in the p h i l i p p i n e s. In
the p h i l i p p i n e s
where talent scouts hunt for faces without talent attached and make them into
celebrities. Showbiz in our country is filled with too many Paris Hiltons. A
lot of them are celebrities… not actors, not singers, just celebrities. Most of
them should just end up in porn, really. In our country
or maybe in the whole of Asia (though I don’t dare generalize about a s  i a )– we want fair skin, preferably long hair, a nice
straight nose. You can be sexy but if you don’t look good enough, you’re shrimp
(the rest of the meat is eatable, but you throw away the head). Here they want
blonde hair, big boobs and solarium burnt skin with full lips and a cleavage. Very
different and yet somehow the same, we still demand something out of each
other.

Beauty
is simply relative. Yeah, who doesn’t know that, right? Well tell that to all
the skin and bone models and the throngs of people who have suffered from
anorexia because they don’t want to be people, they want to be models. Tell
that to all those who have had cheek implants, botox injections, too much
facelifts you couldn’t tell if they’re in rage or in rapture. We all want to be
beautiful the way other people tell us what beautiful is.

I
realized that as you grow older you are less and less impressed by it. Beauty
which doesn’t go with anything else is like drinking non-alcoholic beer. You taste
it but it doesn’t cause a stir in you at all. Me, I go for that look which
makes me stop and say ‘interesting’. It’s more than beautiful, its worthy of my
time. When it’s too simple, too everywhere else or worse, when there are people
who seem to be beautiful just because they look a certain way because of height
or hair I don’t seem to notice at all (or sometimes some women cover themselves
with makeup and clothes, that they draw attention because of their ability to
accessorize instead – which is real talent, I agree). When there is somehow
this special spirit that draws you, that’s beautiful for me. The good news is
there are more and more discerning people out there who understand ‘interesting’
because there are simply too many other people trying to catch their eye with being
flashy.

I
do not really know what beautiful is. In photography there is this magic number
1.618, the Golden mean which is the basis of the rule of thirds – a photography
rule/technique. Years ago, apparently there was this study that discovered that
the faces of fashion models (who we regard as beautiful) have characteristics
which have exactly the ratio 1.618. This ratio is found in all of nature –
petals, seashells, etc. Should we start measuring the ratios on our faces, then
to find? =) Hell, no. And risk a lifetime of shallow insecurity because we are
off target by a couple of decimal points? I believe that there are parts of our
character which we somehow exude without the help of rouge. It’s a very
difficult task to allow ourselves to see what’s really beautiful about other
people, much more about ourselves. Everyone is inevitably hung up on beauty in more ways than one. I mean, look at me, as I write this, I still think I look like a pole
with nothing to offer and I would willingly go lesbian if Angelina Jolie would
join me.

All
I am saying is that for me beauty is so difficult to grasp that people should
not give each other a hard time about it. Or more appropriately we should not
give ourselves a hard time about it. We must never let the beauty of others get
the better of us. So when that bitch at work and in school who thinks she’s all
that gives you a cold shoulder while fake-smiling at you, sarcastically
compliment her on a flaw and you have her by the throat. Everyone is anyway in
one way or another insecure about how she looks. So, everyone should just put
herself out there and flaunt whatever he’s endowed with and learn to appreciate
other people’s attractiveness as well. What do we have to lose?

**posting for the last week of Feb to March 7

I was gone for business to Poland and Germany for a week and returned tired… both rushed and dizzy with adrenaline and lack of sleep from all the long dinners and drinking compulsory to meeting counterparts. There are a couple of rules that I try to follow during such social gatherings related to work. One, never get drunk enough to make a complete moron of yourself in front of your colleagues, especially if you need something from them or you just met them for the first time. If it is fated that someone makes an idiot of himself, be kind enough the next morning by telling him ‘No, it wasn’t that bad. I just didn’t realize you could be so much fun.’ Be vague about it, and good karma will come to you. Hehe. (also be discreet about it to other people, or else they would think you gossip about them too – you freak =)). This week a couple of shots of schnapps almost threw me off, but it was nothing two orders of espresso cannot fix. That’s another thing, this is different from deciding to get totally pissed with your mates enough to, say, sing in the streets with your pants pulled halfway down. People who are not as drunk as you are, then, will remember how you started to dance on the bar singing the Coyote Ugly theme song. Worse, if you are unlucky enough to meet highly competitive corporate whores, it can be used as effective ammo against you. Two, if you are not a white male over 30, you are somehow a minority in some of these meetings. Use that advantage by being interesting, exotic or simply be a breath of fresh air. Do not exploit your exceptionality to max levels though or otherwise suffer being regarded weird. Just be cool enough while you pull off a couple funny remarks and you’ll at least manage to stand out. You can talk about the eccentricities of your country, a couple of biting but not overly done feminist remarks or simply be interested in what other people have to say and some good comebacks will come to you. Three, be humble and know your boundaries, these people are not part of your college clique. They’re not your high school best friends. Sharing anything wild that you’ve done or making a stand up comedy act at their expense or your own, with enough charm can be amusing, but very very rarely. If you’re not sure, zip it. Walking on eggshells with nasty Doc Marten’s will get you nowhere. Four, make friends, it always works. A personal relationship built on being genuine with each other even just for a night over a couple of bottles of Merlot, is always good for getting things done.

Such business meetings can be thoroughly exhausting in the beginning but at some point I guess you learn to enjoy it. It can have huge downsides, however. Apart from only being blessed with 4-5 hours of sleep each day, you also do not get to see much of the cities you visit. I still cannot imagine having to work in projects and having to travel more like some of the people I know. If I am called to stay for at least three weeks in another place, that means I get to miss a lot with babuy, friends and my other activities. If you’re gone for too long, the quality of your free time is compromised inevitably. I totally admire the resilience of some people in projects.

W picked me up at the airport in the afternoon of Saturday, we had lunch and I had a couple of hours of sleep before I had to move again to use the remaining adrenaline in my blood by having some extra inches of my hair cut off again. It’s a bit obsessive of me to schedule a trip to the hairdresser right after arriving from a long week of working. I don’t know why but I just can’t seem to keep myself from looking my usual androgynous self. =)) They say that leaders do not have inertia. Well tough luck since I do HAVE that. I can be a body in motion which remains in motion unless an outside force prevents me from doing so (though, it can also happen the other way around. =)).
———–

Currently, babuy and I are in the mountains enjoying what’s left of winter. The season is almost over and for me it’s the perfect time to be finally earnest of learning to snowboard because there are less bodies on the slope which are endangered by my clumsy presence. So I crammed two meetings, approving invoices, an interview for marketing and emails in the evening on Monday (and ended it with a glass of red of late harvest grapes with a friend at the National Wine Bank – which I didn’t know existed before). I stretched myself then to get the remaining days of the week for vacation. On Tuesday, I decided to just laze around, wake up late and finish a couple of episodes from Ugly Betty – since I am still only on the fourth (haha oo Stella, John Rae, Mark – sa wakas kilalang kilala ko na si Gina Gambaro – sino nga sa inyo yun?). We had breakfast at babuy’s mom’s place after which we went to buy snow pants (which took about 20 mins given my shopping skills, or should I say disability), watched Cocaine Cowboys and packed.

This is my first day on the board and just getting the bindings on took me about 20 minutes before I comfortably was able to do it on my own. I rented the boots and the board. In the rental shop, after I have fitted one boot, the store owner caught me by the shoulders and started turning me, he said he was going to see if my ankle was comfortable by rotating my whole body on my ankle. The moment I had my back turned away from him, he pushed me hard. WTF, I thought loudly. But before I got my fist up, he said— LEFT (as in left foot, hindi Beyonce to the left). Apparently, if someone pushes you unexpectedly, the foot you use to prevent the possible fall is your lead foot in snowboarding. He had to screw the bindings of the board accordingly. I thought that was so fetch. Hehe, fetch anez?

After the first lesson my legs were shaking heavily from tiredness. Muscles I never knew I had are aching and I am pretty sure that I will soon learn of other places in my body which I never new can break my fall, my face included. Babuy is amazingly patient with me the same way he was when I had to relearn driving here, what with all the signs which we didn’t have in Manila. Like in driving, he’s not the type to shout at you making you feel like you intentionally are trying to murder him. He’s not the type who’s going to scare you to tears as if driving is a death defying circus act like sword throwing. He told me not to be scared, but a proper amount of respect and managed expectations will not hurt. Tomorrow, I’m going to the blue slope (black is the toughest, red is difficult, blue is easy-average and green is relatively flat). God bless my soul.
—————-

There is a chance I’ll be having a teaching stint in one of the American colleges in the city. Babuy is not thrilled with it and I know it’s because he knows too well of my tendency to spread myself too thinly, but I am a slave to my own stubborn streak. If all goes well, soon, I will be polluting young minds with nonsense blabbing like the one you just finished reading.

A question hit me hard on the forehead and I itch to retort with this.

What do I look forward to in my life?

My
problem is that I lack explicit introspection. Explicit introspection
is a conscious and regular (bordering habitual) effort to examine one’s
life at each point and stage. This is like an annual event to
me, okay, sometimes it comes twice a year. And I suck at it so much
that my private session with myself can be mistaken for lunacy. Once a
year I just start crying for no apparent reason and for all the reasons
that I have failed to contemplate on. In college, the Sunken Garden and
the sunsets bore witness to this partly entertaining ritual of crying
until I nearly shit myself. So in honor of the eccentricities that life
obliges us to have, I write this piece with much consideration and a quiet smile on my lips. Yes I have to schedule it, that’s how insensitive I can
be to my own feelings that I can be a man saying no to sex in exchange
for the football season.

I do suffer from an overdose of uppers =)) so this review cannot be stained with tears.

The
challenge: I am so everlastingly happy about things and about myself.
Impatient -yes, ambitious -yes, reckless -check, restless -of course,
extroverted -definitely, prudent nuh-uh, blunt -unfortunately, high
strung -rarely. I forgive as easily as I say yes to ice cream and I also
forget in the same manner. I lie sometimes but mostly I am so honest
that I get into trouble. I can coat a rude remark with diplomacy and sarcasm at the same time, but my questions are often stinging.

If I was a shrink half of my patients would
have committed suicide infront of me. I would have committed euthanasia
to get them out of their pain.

How can you think about what’s wrong
with your life you see a possibility almost everywhere you turn? I sometimes think that I am
not normal and that my life will be so dully written because I have
never been genuinely melodramatic over details. An HR analyst told me that the big picture is my only picture at times.

Not even a bad
lovelife can stir me from my half dreaming state. Especially if there is no point waking up. My blood probably has
the same mixture as prozac. I can be upset and go on a rollercoaster
blim of tantrums and then forget about what the argument is about two
minutes later. One time, I kinda broke up with my kinda boyfriend and
during the kinda breakup scene I was guilty of thinking about the things I can learn and the places I can go to after the possible breakup even before we said goodbye.

There are times when even if I have honestly forgiven and forgotten… some people still think that I shouldn’t, and they get touchy about things that were never really meant to be associated to them. Even if they secretly wish it to be. I  still get disoriented to the why’s and the how’s of some things of the past at times and still ask the same stupid questions to myself. Mostly, its either because, I never got an honest answer to them or people are just too scared to face their own ghosts, they never really faced the person they wronged.

When it
comes to melancholy I have the attention span of a two year old. I
bitch in the shallowest manner and grudges are unknown to me. One
grudge took me two long years but most of my friends can see through
that it was mostly just a lameass excuse to escape a scary
confrontation that will only end up with me making up with the person who I
was supposed to curse to kingdom come,  terrified that I may look like I
do not hold principles dearly. But I do. I just find some emotions
useless and boring. (when in truth, I’ve never really stopped loving that friend, because she will always be a big part of me)

Maybe I just prefer laughing at things after obssessing over them for a limited period of time, which I do set myself. Maybe I just prefer raising my middle finger with a bit of a stuck up smirk on my face more than a red face, a hoarse voice and a totally unglamorous bitch fit.

This is all because I feel like I can die
any minute. That, one moment can change so many things and that time
must be taken advantage of . I am excessively frugal with tears and
time spent wondering about what will happen next. Because no one ever
really knows… so I look at the future, look back at the past and
realize that there is nothing sweeter than the Now. 

I don’t
pretend to be deep by using misery. So when I ask myself what I look
forward to, I say nothing and everything at the same time.

I
look forward to a life in Africa or South America or Fiji as much as I
look forward to dreaming about it every night. I look forward to how amusing my little mixed boy will be and how many smartass kids I’ll have - and how many trips we will make to the forest looking for Goldilocks and the three bears - and I will be half believing with them.  I
look forward to my wedding without makeup and without shoes and my
marriage with the only man I loved like this. I look forwad to the
possibility of working in the peace corps as a single woman who owns
ten dogs and walks them on the beach everyday. I look forward to a good
life for everyone I love and have loved. I look forward to a life of a successful entrepreneur mom with a dark room of her own, a column on the local paper and husband and kids to devote herself to.I look forward to each party
over the weekend and the possibility of getting drunk with laughter and
choking with a ridiculous smirk on my face - or just simply vegging on the couch with pizzas on Saturday nights.

I enjoy each dream as if I already have them, and wish I can live seven lives until I am ready to die. Or at least I dream that I can inspire at least two lives in this lifetime to be worthy enough to die in peace.

I look forward to
turning each bruised moment in my life into a scar covered with a new beautiful
tattoo. I look forward to each painful encounter and to each step of
moving on.

I look forward, but most of the times I just look around.