Nice Guys Don’t Finish Last
Contrary to what most people might think, I do not hate Nice Guys. Although Bad Guys may seem more appealing and exciting with their confident swagger, their humorous pick-up lines and their constant fascination for danger and all things forbidden, it is a rare occasion for them to be able to provide that feeling of being safe and the security offered by a Nice Guy.
Some Nice Guys do seem bland. Boring. Vanilla. But there are a selected few who can come up with one-liners that will make you laugh so loud that it makes you think that Vanilla might not be so bad after all.
Airsoft has that talent.
Hence, I decided to crush on him.
I crush you, Airsoft.
The thing when I have crushes is that I become a dumber version of myself. I clam up, avoid looking at him and pretend that he doesn’t exist at all whenever the person I am crushing on is around. I end up talking to myself, flirting in my mind and making up witty conversations with him in my head.
In short, I become a loser.
For example, I had been given two free tickets by my aunt to a concert by Sponge Cola. I love Sponge Cola and I’ve always wanted to watch them live. Because I lived in a small city where concerts by famous rock bands occur every once in a blue moon, I figured this was the perfect opportunity for me to finally watch them perform live.
I asked my sister if she wanted to go with me. She said she has outgrown these things. Heller! I’m two years older than heer! I didn’t want to ask one of my female classmates to go with me. I knew them well enough that they still lived by the highschool girl bathroom mentality – they will only go, if the rest of the group will also be going. I didn’t bother asking one of my highschool classmates because I assumed they would most likely be unavailable. They had work and babies and stuff.
The perfect person to ask to go to these things would have been a boyfriend, in this case, Philip, but of course, he was indisposed in an out of town school activity. Even if he was in town, I would doubt he would be able to go with me anyway. Midge wouldn’t allow him.
So, I figured, the second best person to invite would be a close friend, a boy, who has his own wheels, and preferably someone I wouldn’t mind to be seen dating.
As soon as the realization hit me, my palms started sweating. I debated whether I should text him as early as morning to ask him if he would like to go with me or whether I should wait for the opportunity later to ask him in person since I would be seeing him anyway earlier in the evening because the whole class was invited anyway to attend an RTD* at some popular restaurant. Because I was a coward, I opted to forego the moment and ask him later instead, when we would finally be alone in his car, since I was the one he usually drops off home the last.
I felt nervous about asking him out. To do so would cement the fact that I wanted our friendship to move forward. It would show him that I was interested in him as more than friends. I started daydreaming about the series of events that might happen once we go out together to that concert. We would have to keep the date to ourselves and not let any of our friends know so as to avoid the awkward teasings and tauntings of the barkada. He would probably start picking me up from the house and we’d be going to school together. At first, when our friends start sensing that there was something going on between us, they would tease us mercilessly, them pushing him so that he’ll trip and stumble towards me or flat in his face in the ground infront of me or them quickly lifting my skirt and letting him see the color of my underwear as if we were all still in Grade 3. Eventually, our friends will get used to seeing us together and the teasings will stop and we will become just another one of the boring annoying couples in class.
I took great care in dressing up that night. A black silky spaghetti-strapped shirt under a black knitted sweater, jeans and stilettos for additional height. My make-up was impeccable. I was dressed to impress but casually enough so as not to look as if I was trying too hard. When I arrived at our meeting place, the usual gang was already there, minus Airsoft. I figured he was late, and inquiring about his whereabouts would have made my friends suspicious, so I no longer asked. I hitched a ride with Naruto instead in his motorcycle and together with the rest of my classmates, we all drove towards the RTD*.
The RTD* started with Airsoft still being a no-show. A couple hours later, with our stomachs fully satiated and our brains refreshed with knowledge about the current treatment modalities for Hypertension and the recommendations based on JNC-7, the RTD* ended and we spent a couple of minutes taking pictures of each other. In the end, hitched a ride in SoSexy’s boyfriend’s car along with the rest of my female classmates and I ended up being the first one to be dropped off.
Suffice it to say, Airsoft did not show up at all.
Tang ina mo, Airsoft.. You stood me up before I could even ask you out.
Leche ka, BREAK NA TAYO.
— RTD – Round Table Discussion – a free lecture discourse set-up by medical representatives and their companies for physicians for the purpose of promoting new products and providing a Powerpoint lecture of the latest recommended management protocols for a certain disease entity. Usually begins with an abundant buffet-style dinner and/or snacks and ends with an open forum for any question pertaining to the prior given lecture. May or may not include a raffle draw of promotional give-aways or an acoustic band for entertainment.
Disappointing My Mother
Out of all the members in my family, I have always had the most lax schedule. Before starting medical school, I was volunteering at some hospital every afternoon, together with my boyfriend Rockstar. Both of my parents were working and my siblings had classes from morning till afternoon. As such I was usually the one tasked to go out and deposit money to the bank, pay the phone bills, electric bills, water bills, cable bills and even my siblings’ tuition fees.
One morning, my mother asked me to go to her office later because she had an errand which she wanted me to do. This was a common occurrence since she sometimes leaves blank deposit slips in her office and I cannot go to the bank without her signature in the form. A few hours later, I was finally dropped off by Rockstar to my mother’s office.
“Hi, Ma.” I took her hand and raised it to my forehead as a sign of respect.
“Oh, you’re here. Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“[Mistress], are you pregnant?”
I was shocked. “Excuse me?”
“I found your diary last night. You left it in our room, wide open. So, I read your latest entry… [Mistress], how can you do this to us? Haven’t all the unwanted pregnancies from your cousins ever taught you something?”
I wanted the floor to just open and swallow me up. I slinked further down my seat. I’m so stupid. This was all my fault. My period has been late for a few weeks. I have an irregular cycle so this shouldn’t cause such an alarm. But because I have been sexually active with Rockstar much too often than I would have cared for, I too was afraid that the frequency might have increased the chances that I could be pregnant. So, I wrote about it in my diary, which was a standard-looking blue Corona notebook back then. Because I was still deliriously inlove with Rockstar back then, I wrote about how despite my own fears, I wouldn’t really mind if I was pregnant since I know he will take good care of me and he will be a great father to my baby. Now, since I would usually write in my notebook and then encode it afterwards and our PC was in my parent’s bedroom, she must have read my diary when I had totally forgotten that I had left it in their room, after taking up a phone call from Rockstar while I was in the middle of my encoding session.
“Ma, I’m irregular. I was just afraid that I could be pregnant,” I told her, in a really small voice. I was afraid of my Mom. Still am though.
“What about our plans for you? You have disappointed us so much. What kind of example are you setting to your siblings? I would have thought that you were the smartest one in the family. I did not expect this from you. How could you do this to us? We have always supported you in all your decisions! You know, when you said you don’t want to apply abroad anymore and you want to go into medical school instead, we supported you. Even when we don’t know where we would actually get money to sustain your education for the next few years. Do you even still want to continue pursuing medicine now?”
“Ma, I’m not pregnant. I still want to go into medical school.”
“But how will you focus if things between you and Rockstar are too serious? I know it was a wrong decision to allow you to have a boyfriend. You two are always spending your time together. It can be distracting for your studies.”
“Ma, I’ve had boyfriends in college before. I never let boys affect my education. Look, despite the fact that I had boyfriends before, I never neglected my grades and I still got to graduate in time, didn’t I?”
“But are you sexually active with Rockstar?”
I could have lied and told her no but she read my diary so she’d obviously know I wasn’t telling the truth. I could have come up with a lesser lie and tell her yes, and then tell her that we only did it one time. I could have thought of a thousand other better things to tell her than what actually came out of my mouth if I had more time but alas! Being the tactless person that I was, I blurted out the first thing that popped into my mind.
“Ma, I’ve been sexually active since I was 21 with my other boyfriends in the big city. I know what to do to make sure I don’t get pregnant.”
I cringed as soon as I heard the words come out of my mouth. I just basically told my Mom I haven’t been a virgin for a long time, that I’ve slept with more than one man, and that basically despite trying to raise me well, her daughter was a slut.
GAHHHHD…
It probably took all my mother’s willpower not to slap me in the face right then and there.
My mother then went on an extremely long tirade regarding my lack of moral values, my disregard for their feelings and the Christian values they taught us, their personal vendetta against Rockstar for taking advantage of me, veiled implications of their not wanting me to pursue medicine anymore, my cousins’ unwanted pregnancies (I have one cousin who got pregnant during her affair with a married man and two other female cousins in my mother’s sides who were forced into marriage because of unwanted pregnancies), my stupidity, my apathy and my loose morals. She did not yell but continued chastising me in a soft tone, as she told me of how she couldn’t sleep at all last night and how she would just stare off into space and think about how I have destroyed their dreams for me, and how she wouldn’t even notice that she was crying until her tears were literally dripping down her neck.
I hated that. I couldn’t stand that. I would have preferred it more if she yelled or slapped at my face instead. I could face her anger well. What I couldn’t bear to face was the guilt and her disappointment.
I couldn’t look at my mother’s face for quite some time. I was allowed to go out with friends, even until the wee hours of the night, but Rockstar and I were not allowed to go out anymore together during evenings (as if people cannot have sex during mornings or afternoons, hello?!). It took a few months for my mother to learn to trust me again. I had been marked for life and indiscretions like this were one of those things that my mother would be able to forgive, but never ever forget.
So now during evenings, I just tell my parents I’m going out with friends even when I’m actually going out with a boyfriend.
Yeah, I know, I know. I can be such a bad daughter sometimes.
Stop the Wedding!
“[Mistress], you’re late. Everybody’s in church for the rehearsal.”
I hurriedly dressed up in the simple black dress my mother handed me. As I put on the 3-inch sling backs on my well-manicured toes, she began ranting off a litany of things that she had to do for the day.
“I already told your sister that you’re on your way. Everybody’s waiting for you in church. I think the seamstress has a problem with your dress. But I think one of your bridesmaids has already talked to her. I think you should try to get in touch with her anyway. I still have to go to the printers because I need to have a few more invitations printed up since your groom had additional guests he had to invite at the last minute. And your father’s busy with the caterers so he can’t do it himself.”
Wait. What the F—. “Excuse me? Mom? What is this all about?”
My mother rolled her eyes at me. “Your wedding, iha. Please don’t joke with me right now. I am soo not in the mood.
I plopped down on the bed ungracefully. Did I just hear her right?
MY. WEDDING.
“My wedding? With whom?”
She looked at me exasperatingly. “Iha, this is not the time to dilly-dally. Now, chop-chop. Hurry. Everybody’s waiting for you.”
I felt like I was going through the motions as I rode the car that was bringing me to church for the rehearsal dinner. I vaguely remember hearing myself ask her again and again who I was getting married to but she took my lack of knowledge of the man I was getting married to as another one of my well-known cinematic ploys to joke and make fun of her.
“Can I take a look at the invitation, Mom?”
Maybe I can take a peep at this mystery man that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
“I don’t have a copy of it. We ran out of invitations, that’s why I have to go to the printers to have an additional batch reprinted in the first place.”
“Ma, who is this mystery groom? This isn’t a parental kind of thing, is it?”
She rolled her eyes at me again. “Oh, you! Why should I set you up with a parental? We’re not even Muslim. Stop playing these silly games with me, iha! I don’t have time to deal with this right now!”
God. I’m getting married tomorrow.
And to some stranger I don’t even know.
I tried desperately to search through my memory for my so-called groom. The most that I got was a medium-height well-built faceless guy in a black coat and tie. When my mother dropped me off at the church, I saw the line of men and women, mostly friends and relatives, waiting for my arrival. Several orange and purple flowered topiaries were lined in one side of the church. I cringed, hoping against hope that somebody will tell me that those are not for my wedding. SexyMama, one of my highschool classmates, approached me right away.
“[Mistress], there’s a problem with your dress. I’m so sorry. I’ve already talked to them and they said they can’t get you the dress you asked for to be ready by tomorrow. I know it’s my fault since I was the one who recommended you to them in the first place but they are willing though to have my old wedding dress resized to fit you and they’ll be able to deliver it to you as early as tomorrow morning.”
I just looked at her blankly. SexyMama was tall and extremely lanky. I, on the other hand, was petite and more curvy. It would take the best darn seamstress in the entire city to make me fit into her wedding gown. “I’m going to be wearing someone else’s wedding gown on my own wedding day?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Y-Yes…”
I have dreamed of my wedding my whole life and now, I’m going to be wearing someone else’s hand me down? “SexyMama, are you fuckin’ kidding me?”
“I am SO sorry. The dressmakers totally underestimated the time it will take them to get all the beads and embroidery sewn into the dress. I think they only got the embroideries today so they still had to saw up the whole thing and your actual wedding dress will not be finished by tomorrow.”
“Okay…” As if I had a choice. I sighed in exasperation. “Ahmmm, SexyMama?”
“Yes?”
“Who am I marrying tomorrow?”
SexyMama rolled her eyes at me. “Stop it, [mistress]. That’s not funny. The two of you have been dating for almost two years. Don’t tell me you’ve somehow conveniently forgotten who you’re marrying tomorrow!”
Seeing that I wasn’t going to get any dish from her, I grabbed my sister’s arm as she was about to walk past us. She was busy trying to set up the entrance of the bridal entourage.
“Hey, you’re here,” my sister, SisterJ, exclaimed. “Finally, we can start the rehearsal. Places, p—“
“SisterJ, who’s my groom?”
“Oh, don’t be coy, [mistress]. We’re all too busy to go along with your lousy pre-wedding humor.”
“What the— I have no idea who I’m marrying! Can’t you just get me a copy of the invitation so that I at least know the name of this guy I’m supposed to be spending my life with, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health?”
I was freaking out, obviously. But I didn’t care.
SisterJ slapped me on the cheek. “Stop it! Get your act together. This is all just pre-wedding jitters. Why don’t you just go there and stand at the end of the line and wait for your turn to march. We’ve been waiting for you for almost an hour! We’ll start with the rehearsals. Now!”
The sting from her slap was like a cold bucket of iced water spilled on my entire body. It calmed me, yes, enough so that I was able to go through the motions of walking towards the end of the bridal entourage and waiting for my turn to march. I vaguely remember saying thanks to the friends around me who congratulated me for my wedding tomorrow.
“You must be so excited!” exclaimed Darna.
“You’ve been waiting for this all your life!” Janedoe remarked giddily.
“Who would have thought you’ll actually get married before you turn 30?” Funnyboy interrupted. “We used to think you weren’t interested in marriage until you’ve finally saturated your desire for your single blessedness.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I heard myself say to them. Like a robot. I still had no idea who I was marrying. And then I thought, They are right. I have been waiting for this for almost my entire life. Even if I somehow gave them the impression that I was okay with the relatively short durations of my many past relationships because I was still enjoying being single, at the back of my mind, I secretly longed for the long-term relationships that most of my friends had. I worried that I might become a spinster for the rest of my life. I feared that I may not get the happily ever after I’ve been dreaming of.
And then I thought, What the hell?! What girl in her right mind marries someone she doesn’t know?
So in the middle of my wedding rehearsal march, I stopped and I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“Itigil ang kasal!” (Stop the wedding!)
And then I finally woke up. It was just a really bad dream after all. Thank God.
* Parental – A Muslim custom of fixing up the marriage of one’s child to another child of another family after an agreement between the parents of both families, which includes the settlement of a certain amount of money or dowry that will be exchanged from the family of the groom to that of the bride’s in exchange for the services rendered in rearing the bride.
Just Another Cheap Stone
I don’t know what it is that I exude but somehow guys I don’t particularly don’t know seem to think that I’m fair game. It’s not as if I go around whispering erotic stories to unknown strangers. Even if I do enjoy exchanging the occasional sexy banters with my friends, when it comes to relating personal sexual experiences, I clam up and let the conversation roll around me, without contributing those of my own. I have my own reasons, mostly related to self-preservation. As such I was particularly slightly surprised when CuteDoctor started flirting with me and claiming his less than pure intentions.
CuteDoctor and I used to be classmates way back during my elementary days. As he transferred schools in the middle of our elementary years, we lost touch for a few years. It wasn’t until I started medical school that our paths crossed again, since he was about two years my senior and a good friend of one of my former close friends in highschool. Because I’m not as friendly and approachable as the rest of them, the most that exchanged between us were the occasional nods and “Hello” of people who used to know each other.
When I started rotating as an intern in the hospital where he started working in, he began to be flirtatious, starting from the first text message he sent me in the.middle of the surgery that I was assisting in.
Gud am. Its nyc 2 c dat u r stil as cute as d girl I usd 2 hav a crush durng grade skul.
As an intern, I was obliged to be nice to him. And since it wasn’t my style to totally diss guys who flirt with me, I did my best to be cordial with him, without leading him on. Everything seemed to go well, as this guy wasn’t known for forcing women who are not into him, and I managed to be able to avoid him for a few months.
Until I ended up rotating as an intern under his department. And as luck would have it, he ended up becoming my junior resident.
In his defense, as a resident, he was very nice to me. In between surgeries, we would go off at the storage area to share a few smokes or two. We talked a lot about school, our future plans, our childhood, our elementary days. He was very wordly and intelligent than most guys his age and I started to see just what it is about him that made a lot of women fall for his flirtation antics.
One not-so-busy night, as I was sitting infront of the computer and checking out my mails, he took a seat at a chair behind me and stuck his face close to mine.
“Hey, give me a kiss, why don’t you?”
I was surprised. So I backed off from him and then laughed.
“Come on! It’s just a kiss.”
“Cute!” (If no one else was around, we call each other by name instead of Doctor or Doctora So-and-so but in the company of other people, we would address each other using the title)
“You know you want to.”
I laughed him off. CuteDoctor was a flirt. He was also one of the more well-known players in school. He was popular for having had three girlfriends among his classmates at the same time and for having at least one girlfriend in almost every batch of medical students. He made a name for always going after the prettiest, the sexiest, the smartest, the most virginal-looking or the most unlikeliest to fall for players like him. He was a hound dog, who, just like the popular saying goes, ran after anything with a skirt.
I wasn’t bound to make myself one of his so-called “victims” so I tried desperately to fend off his advances. But he was extremely relentless. Unlike most doctors during 24-hour duty who slept in their scrubs, he slept in his boxer shorts and had no qualms about walking around the Conference Room in his boxers with me sleeping just a couple feet away from him. At times, I felt like he was trying to seduce me. Once while I was already lying in my makeshift bed for a few hours of shut-eye, he would look down on me as he stood beside my bed and tease me persistently again about kissing him. I practically managed to push his face away from me and laugh it off so as not to offend him that much. He kept bugging me to go out with him, despite the fact that everybody in the school and the hospital knew who his girlfriend was, listing off secret places he’d love to bring me to, insinuating that I use oral contraceptives rather than condoms when we do go out, even when I kept telling him again and again that I am tired of secretly dating people that everybody within 1000 mile radius of the small city where I come from knows about.
Yes, implying that he wanted to have sex with me may have bordered on sexual harassment but I can’t really say it was just completely his fault either. After all, I usually just laugh him off and have never outright told him no.
Okay, I won’t deny that I was tempted. I’d be a hypocrite if I said I didn’t consider it. To lose yourself in mindless sexual pleasure with someone you don’t particularly care about (and whom friends have always wondered might have had a huge d*ck, hence, his so-called prowess with many women), it was severely tempting especially for someone who has almost forgotten how it was to be held by a real man (ALMOST. I repeat, almost.) But I couldn’t bring myself to give in. I am not bad really. Just bored most of the time. I am past that age where I would want meaningless sex with no strings attached. And to quote him in one of his most favorite analogies, even if I may not be finding my diamond in all the gems that I am coming across, I don’t particularly want to wake up one day and realize that I have wasted my time again on just another cheap stone.
Oh yeah, I know how terribly disappointed you guys are after reading this.
The Great Beautification Project
I am one of those girls who loves dressing up, but only once in a while, about less than a typical fashionista but more than the average jobless woman in her late 20s. So, during those days of girly-girl insanity, I might end up either wearing a short skirt, gussying up my face with full make-up, showing some cleavage or walking in 3-inch stilettos.
So, one time, I decided to go to school in sans full female painted warrior mode and proceeded to attack my make-up drawer. Yes, I do not have a kit, like most girls do, but instead I have a drawer for all my cosmetics. Over the years, I have accumulated a vast amount of cheap and not-so-cheap make-up in various kinds, brands and colors, and they are all sitting at the top drawer of my vanity. My beautification skills are still not as brilliant as I would have wanted to but I’ve learned to improvise by using a couple tricks here and there. What has frustrated me when putting on make-up, since time immemorial though, is the fact that I can’t make my eyes pop to save my life.
You see, I probably have the world’s shortest female eyelashes.
I can only dream about having long flirty eyelashes because apparently mascara and I don’t mix. Whatever I do, I always end up blotting them. An hour after leaving the house, I already looked like the girl who had just spent hours crying after she got dumped, with my raccoon eyes and clumps of mascara sticking to my upper and lower eyelids. I have tried the black mascara, the blue one, the cheap ones, the more expensive ones. In case anybody is about to give me unsolicited advice on how to use a mascara wand properly, trust me, of course, I curled the lashes first using the handy eyelash curler (Hello. Give me some credit. I am not dumb enough to actually not use one before applying the mascara) but still nothing worked. The curl in my eyelashes would only last for a couple minutes before my lacrimal glands would start acting up and proceed to blot out my previously well-applied mascara, making it run all over my eyelids, raccoon style.
It was sooo not the look I was going for.
When I finally resolved to accepting that indeed I do have the world’s shortest eyelashes and have already finished trying to cope up with this by slashing all the pictures of every long eye-lashed Maybelline model in every women’s magazine around the 100 m vicinity from my bedroom, I decided to try using eyeliner instead. Watching Gossip Girls and The Hills somehow inspired me in this new endeavour as I wondered how they looked so chic and casual with eyelinered-eyes and lip-glossed mouths even while apparently just lounging around at the comforts of their own homes.
Now, black eyeliner is making a comeback due to the so-called Emo. In my desire to avoid being stared at by salesladies at cosmetics counters or being mistaken as if I’m vouching for Emo-ness at the age of 27, I avoided the pencil and wanted to try my hand in using black liquid eyeliner. I remembered one particular young lady dentist I met from the community who used liquid eyeliner who looked incredibly fantastic that I sooo wanted to BE her. After poking my eyes repeatedly with the sharp pointed thingie, making weird crooked black lines in my upper and lower eyelids and having it blot all over my face less than 5 minutes after, I finally decided to give that up and stick to pencil instead.
I’ll take the Emo look over the girl-who-just-got-dumped look any day.
This cosmetics-related post looks obviously lost among the dating stories in this blog but I decided to write this because I remembered that Philip once commented that my eyes looked really nice after I had used some black eyeliner (with a pencil) on them. Must be why I’m doubly trying to master the skills for making my eyes pop using make-up, even if I’m repeatedly failing in them. Apparently I can stitch a 10-inch laceration using silk 3.0 in cutting needle in my sleep but I cannot make my eyes pop using mascara and eyeliner.
Sigh… the stupid things we do for love.
— inspired by Charming, but Single’s So… (November 7, 2007)
I love u [my fullname including surname]
There are guys that are so dim-headed that even if you always come to their side with just one text message or even spend almost 95% of your waking hour with them, they will still have no idea that you are interested in them.
There are guys who have incredibly low self-esteem that they cannot fathom the idea that any girl will be interested in them, so they back-out from the courting process even when the girl is practically begging for their attention.
And then there are guys who are just so incredibly dense that they cannot sense that a girl is not interested in them at all, unless she actually starts physically running away from them.
I have this neighbor – we’ll call him GuyNextDoor – who can sometimes be so creepy, he is practically bordering on stalker-ish. GuyNextDoor was about a few years older than me, a professional bum (aka jobless and almost in his 30’s) who spent 95% of his time posting various rants about the local government and the entertainment industry by posting multiple bulletins in his Friendster. He and I have known each other almost all our lives. Since I do not hang out with the other kids nor am I active in the youth organizations around our village unlike most of my siblings, I do not really have a lot of close friends of the opposite sex within our neighborhood. But eversince my brother started playing basketball with the other boys in our neighborhood, GuyNextDoor and my brother became quite close.
One day, I found an add request from him through my Friendster. Despite the fact that we never actually had any face-to-face conversation (except for the occasional nods of recognition whenever he would politely open our gate for me whenever I come home from school while he and my brother were playing basketball at the half-court infront of our house) I figured, What the heck, I know him anyway, so, I added him up. And then he started sending me messages.
GuyNextDoor: Why “It’s Complicated”? (referring to my Friendster status)
Mistress: I have a boyfriend but like I said, it’s complicated (like I really was going to start narrating my lovelife to a complete stranger. Ano siya, feeling close?)
GuyNextDoor: Okay. I think you and I are alike. I would love to get to know you.
Mistress: Uhhh… What do you mean?
GuyNextDoor: I read your profile and saw your pics. I think you’re a very interesting person. Me, what you see is what you get. I really don’t care what other people think of me.
Mistress: Uhhh… okay.
GuyNextDoor: I love you [my full name including surname]
Mistress: You don’t even know me that well and you’re telling me you love me?
GuyNextDoor: I just know. I love you so much.
Mistress: (logs out from Friendster)
He started making comments on my photos (stuff like, you are so beautiful, etcetera). I simply ignored it. The next time, he e-mails me again asking for my number. I think I was completely inebriated that time so I actually gave it to him. He then started texting me more creepy messages.
GuyNextDoor: Hi.
Mistress: Hello.
GuyNextDoor: I mis seeing u arnd.
Mistress: Iv bin bz w skul.
GuyNextDoor: I thnk ur vry beutful.
Mistress: Uh… tnx.
GuyNextDoor: I love u [my full name including surname]
Mistress: U dont evn kno me.
GuyNextDoor: I stil love u.
Mistress: (turns off her cellphone)
He then starts texting me more and more I-love-you messages and even miscalling me. I continued ignoring it. He kept sending me more I-love-you messages through my Friendster and still I ignore it. He even posts the complete lyrics of some love song to my Friendster profile, which of course, got all my friends clicking on his profile to see who is the mysterious guy professing his love for me in complete view of the general public. Still, I ignored him. Whenever we would cross paths around the neighborhood, with me, usually hurrying up to catch a ride for school and him, in his motorcycle, he would always stop his motorcycle and talk to me.
“Hi,” GuyNextDoor smiles.
“Hello,” I said, still walking hurriedly.
“You don’t reply back to my messages.”
“I have no load.” I was lying. I’m always subscribing to Globe UnliTxt everyday.
“I see….”
“I’m kind of in a hurry. I’ll be late for class.”
“Okay. See you around. Take care.”
“Thanks.”
And then he texts me again while I’m already on my way to school, and I am obliged to text back because he just saw me buy load at the nearby sari-sari store. The same thing happens, of course, when he starts telling me he loves me. I would not care to reply back anymore, despite his 3-5 miss calls.
I don’t know. Maybe he just doesn’t have a clue. Maybe my being polite misleaded him to thinking it was a sign of interest. Maybe he’s just incredibly dense that he doesn’t realize I do not want to have anything to do with him. Or maybe he’s deluded himself into thinking that he is a perfectly great catch.
Yeah, maybe, that’s it.
Mommy-Calling
Truthfully speaking, in terms of attraction factor, I have learned to categorize men into three particular categories:
Hooters Man – one who prefers big breasts
Junk Man – one who prefers big buttocks
Tits & Ass Man – one who prefers a combination of both
As such , I have noted that most guys who end up liking me fall into the first category, the Hooters Man, because of, obviously, my unfortunately inappropriately-sized rack.
It is not, as most people would think, a blessing but rather, a curse.
I am not quite comfortable with these twin mountains infront of me. Having been brought up as a semi-tomboy during my childhood years, I wasn’t quite as happy that I got these so-called blessed gifts to all women. And at first, these weren’t really as annoying to me as they used to be. It wasn’t until I started medical school when I realized that I was actually more well-endowed than the rest of the girls I was hanging out with. For one, none of my ex-boyfriends mentioned it and even my boyfriend that time didn’t say it to my face. I noted this particular development after one of my younger classmates in medical school started calling me “Mommy [Mistress].”
I was scratching my head in obvious confusion one particular time and decided to ask FunnyBoy. “Why does Naruto keep calling me Mommy?”
He laughed. “You don’t know why?”
“No. Is that like some form of endearment to him?”
“I’m not even sure if I should tell you.”
“Oh, come on! I keep hearing him say it all the time. I feel like it’s some kind of joke that only the inner circle knows about and I’m not even in on.”
FunnyBoy laughed. “It’s the Mommy thing, [mistress]. It’s like Naruto wants you to take care of him, like a mother. And to do all the things that mommies do to their babies.”
“To babies?” Now I was more confused than ever. “Like what?”
“You really have no idea?”
“Oh, come on. Now I’m curious. I have a feeling I probably won’t like what I’m going to hear but tell me anyway.”
“You know, breastfeeding… Since you have, you know…” and he pouted his lips and pointed them to the direction of my chest.
Needless to say, I was mortified.
I couldn’t look at my Mommy-calling Naruto for some time. I asked Rockstar, who was my boyfriend that time, about the incident and he just grinned at me sheepishly.
“But [mistress], you do have big breasts. That’s why I feel so darn lucky having you,” he remarked patriotizingly.
I, of course, refused to accept that I had big breasts and proceeded to do the Meryl Streep thing in “Bridges of Madison Country” that night as I stripped off all my clothes and looked at my naked self infront of the mirror.
Shoot.
I did not want big breasts but it looks like I’m stuck with them, indefinitely.
I sighed. I can’t really understand why men are endlessly fascinated with breasts. It’s really just all ducts, lobules and fats. Lots and lots of fats. I find it strange how men do not grow out of their inborn fascination for breasts even after they have gotten over the breastfeeding phase during their infancy. I would have thought it would be incredibly a sexual turn–off if a man:
a) remembers that their own mothers and grandmothers have them
b) remembers that his father once provided sexual gratification to their mother by using them for foreplay
c) ergo, remembers that his father and mother had sex at one time or another
d) remembers that he used to be breastfeed through one of his mother’s own breasts
e) thinks that one day their woman’s breast will droop and sag
If you look at it that way, I would think that a man should be disgusted with breasts since it would be a reminder of a particular time in their life when they were still fragile, more vulnerable and less masculine.
So, guys, what do you think?
Cooking 101 (Part Deux)
I was talking to Philip one time and was telling him about the time I helped out my brother with making the fruit salad for his class’ Linggo ng Wika.
“Hey, that’s my favorite! I love fruit salad,” he told me.
I smiled. “That’s good. Don’t worry, I’ll make you one someday.” Sooo not gonna happen. Unless we started moving in together and there is no way THAT’s gonna happen… I just like to make him think that I might actually cook for him. He can always fantasize about watching me toil infront of a hot stove wearing a cute teddy, stilettos and an apron, during those long cold nights.
“Do you cook by the way?”
I shrugged, “Uhhh… no.”
“Why? Haven’t you ever watched your mother cook and then ask her to teach you?”
“My mother rarely cooks, we have a maid for that. And when my mother actually does cook, it’s usually the kind of food that I would never eat, like Pinakbet or Kare-kare,” I said, scrunching my face in disgust.
He looked at me. “You don’t eat vegetables?”
“I do. But I’m picky. I will never eat okra or ampalaya (bitter cucumber) though. I have reservations about stringbeans and eggplant but I will eat them if I really had no choice.”
He smiled. “Too bad. I love a girl who can cook.”
Silence. He’s probably thinking of Midge, who can cook. And I’m thinking of him thinking of Midge, who watches him everyday as he consumes the meals she cooked for him.
Refusing to feel depressed, I erased the sordid image in my mind and beamed at him, “My mother always asks me how will I ever survive when I finally get married and I still don’t know how to cook for my husband and my children.”
“So what do you tell her?”
“I tell her I’ll just find myself a husband who will cook for me instead.”
Philip laughs and finding me adorable, proceeds to hug me.
Cooking 101 (Part One)
I can’t cook.
For the past 27 years of my life, I have never learned to cook.
Oh, I can fry an occasional fish, boil an egg, warm up a can of corned beef, cook rice in a rice cooker (which is basically following the 1:1 rule, no science in that), but I cannot make a complete fantastic meal to save my life. I can make a really fatty atherosceloris-beckoning breakfast though, composed of coking an egg sunny side up, warming up a can of corned beef, frying a couple of nitrite-laden hotdogs and toasting last’s night’s left over rice, if I really had no choice, but a year of that kind of cooking and I’d be the youngest contender for bypass surgery at the age of 28.
I’ve had several cooking mishaps, one which consisted of me attempting to make pancakes which resembled doughy scrambled eggs (which a few of my classmates have witnessed and never made me forget, referring to it as “The Unforgettable Day [Mistress] Tried To Make Hotcakes In the Community”) and another incident where I tried frying hotdogs, only to realize that I had actually forgotten to remove the hotdogs from their individual plastic wrappers and I had managed to make those plastic wrappers curl up as they burned in all that hot oil.
I blame it on the fact that I lived most of my life with a maid, who cooks all our meals for us. My mother, being a working mother for as long as I can remember (and will probably continue to do so, as long as the Philippine government will allow her) rarely cooks except occasionally, on the weekends that our maid has her days off. Actually, even on those days, my aunt, who has never married and lives with us, does most of the cooking so, I never really found the opportunity to ask my mother to teach me how to cook as she toils over a hot stove nor the drive to actually immerse myself in the kitchen.
But I’m really just making excuses. I’m lazy. That’s probably it.
But for the past few months, learning how to cook has provided me with a certain fascination equivalent to Fuck-Me-Boots* (black classy knee-length boots that I dream about but cannot find, afford, nor wear since I have calves disproportionate to my body from all that bicycling during my highschool days) and mountain-climbing (an activity I’d really want to take up but have found no friends willing to do that with me). I found myself checking out websites of other bloggers who cook, salivating over the pictures while wiping my own drool from my laptop and poring through cooking recipes in the Internet of foods that I will probably not be able to make from scratch.
Hence, I have resolved to mentally add this to my list of 101 reasons why I should move out of my parent’s house after I find myself a job: It will give me the opportunity to finally force myself to learn how to cook.
SoSexy, who has officially won the class’ vote for the Best Dinuguan (blood pudding) award, used to tell me that learning how to cook will make my then boyfriend fall for me more. As much as I loved my boyfriend then, I’m lazy guys, hasn’t anybody noticed that yet? So, it is only until recently that I actually started fantasizing about cooking up a romantic meal for some guy – after which, he would be so enthralled with my cooking that with a mouth full of Tequila Lime Chicken topped with Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Salad, he will go down on his knees and look up to me and say:
Whhhhmp mmm mmmpppprrrrhhhy mpphooo?
(Translation: Will you marry me?)
And I’d tell him yes.
Unless of course, I didn’t want him to. Then I’d just shove another spoonful of the Apricot and Walnut Vareniki dessert into his mouth instead and pretend that the wedding proposal never happened.
Catholic School Girl Guilt
I occasionally think that maybe I have a destructive personality.
I frequently lament on not having a boyfriend and getting worried that maybe someday I will end up dying alone, but when I do end up in a relationship, I somehow end up mucking things up until it just doesn’t seem to work out for anyone of us that the relationship just has to end.
And the cycle repeats itself.
I say this because I have noted one particular attitude of mine that has most likely brought about the start of the impending destruction in most of the relationships I have been in.
I call it, the Catholic School Girl Guilt.
You know that Golden Rule for Cheating Boys that goes something like, “If you’re ever caught cheating, at all costs, never ever admit to the truth”?
Well, I do the exact opposite.
Even if they have no idea that I had done something wrong, I feel so incredibly guilty that I end up confessing to my boyfriend about it. It probably had something to do with the guilt that has been ingrained far up my cerebrum from my Catholic School upbringing when occasionally, even if you haven’t really done anything wrong, your teachers make you feel like you did. You become unable to look them in the eye and your conscience really eats at you that you eventually end up confessing to a deed which, most of the times, you didn’t even do in the first place.
Case point my freshman year in medical school. I had been seeing Rockstar for more than six months already. I had just started medical school and was starting to make new friends. I loved my new classmates and I was missing my old college buddies terribly. Hence, I wanted the opportunity to get to know my new classmates more. A bunch of the guys were always inviting me out for drinks and night-outs. I always kept telling Rockstar that I wanted to go with them. Rockstar, always feeling threatened by the presence of other guys spending more time with me, forbid me to.
This, of course, does not do well for me.
“No,” Rockstar remarked, for the umpteenth time.
“Come on. We’re always hanging out together. Can’t the two of us go out with them for once?”
He, of course, took this the wrong way. “Why? Are you bored with me?”
“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just that I want to get to know these people too. I would be going to spend the next five years with them after all. As for us, we’ve known each other for six months now and baby, we have a lifetime to get to know each other. Don’t I deserve the chance to be able to hang-out with these people as well?”
“Well, if you loved them so much more than me, then maybe you should break up with me to be with them.”
“You’re totally taking this the wrong way.”
“No, seriously, I mean it.”
“What? I’m being insecure? Is it so bad to be worried that my girlfriend wants to spend time with other guys than her own boyfriend? They’re guys, [mistress]. I know what guys are interested in when they ask out girls their own age. You can’t understand me because you’re a girl and you don’t know these things.”
Rockstar had no concept of a platonic relationship with the opposite sex. His closest female friends have all been either girls he used to court in the past, he used to have a thing with, used to have a thing for him or are just too unattractive to even have a thing with at all. I pouted. “You’re being irrational.”
“Now, I’m irrational? They like you! Is it actually wrong for me to feel threatened that some other guys are interested in you and you actually want to get to know them?”
“They are NOT all attracted to me.”
“Not all? So you mean to say, there are some who actually are.”
This is the point when I should have just kept my mouth shut. But the Catholic School Girl guilt slipped in before I could even stop myself. I was just so pissed off with him that I didn’t even think first before talking my mouth off. “Well, there are a few who seem a little too friendly.”
“WHAT?” If Rockstar was a cartoon character, it would be safe to say that there would be steam coming out of his ears at this point.
But, oh, I had already opened the floodgates and I must have been incredibly stupid that I proceeded to further incriminate myself. “You know, just a little too flirty that maybe misconstrued as a sign of interest. But it’s nothing. They’re probably just being friendly or something.”
“Who?” Rockstar asked me, his expression hard as stone.
“Rockstar!”
“If you’re not going to tell me, I swear I’m going to leave you and walk out of here right now!”
“Seriously, [mistress]!”
“Okay, okay… I think FunnyBoy has a thing for me.”
Before I knew it, he begins this major phone brigade wherein he calls my bestfriend from highschool, EngineerBoy, asks him about FunnyBoy which of course, EngineerBoy does not have any idea about, asks for the number of his girlfriend Darna, who is also one of my classmates in medical school, calls her up and asks her about FunnyBoy as well which she fervently denies, asks her for FunnyBoy’s number, calls him and asks him the most embarrassing question as to whether it is true that FunnyBoy is interested in me.
The whole thing happens with me fuming and pleading him not to proceed with all this embarrassment.
“Rockstar, come on! This is embarrassing to me and to FunnyBoy! For all we know, I’m just imagining things and he’s really just being friendly. What if he’ll start thinking that I’m one of those conceited girls who think every man in the room is in love with her?”
“Stop it! I’m done talking to you!” And he proceeds to talk to FunnyBoy on the phone. FunnyBoy, of course, denies being interested in me and their conversation ends with Rockstar telling him to stop flirting with me because I already have a boyfriend. Somewhat appeased, Rockstar finally relents and drops the argument with me.
Of course, at this point, I was already incredibly humiliated that for the next few weeks, I avoided FunnyBoy as much as I could and just simply couldn’t look him in the eye.
Me and my big mouth.
