Boob Tube Reviews: The L Word
We have three televisions at home: one in my parent’s bedroom, one in my aunt’s bedroom and one, at the living room. At nights, my brother, my sister and I can frequently be seen fighting over the remote and flipping channels in between commercials of shows that the other person was probably watching. Thus, if the three of us preferred watching three different shows, none of us usually gets to watch the preferred show completely except for snippets in between the commercials of the other shows.
My younger sister and I have bonded though, as both of us loved The L Word.
The L Word is a show about women who are into women. As such it delves into the truths about lesbianism, how lesbian women deal with their relationships with their girlfriends, how they handle jealousy, affairs, raising children, discrimination, being feminine, being butch, and even Breast Cancer. There aren’t obviously a lot of hot men in the show but there is the occasional nudity. It’s a very eye-opening show which I would not recommend if you’re homophobic, extremely conservative or you have reservations against watching women kiss other women. As a heterosexual female who would prefer average-looking men over hot gorgeous women, I do highly recommend watching the show because it provides a better insight as to understanding the third sex. It does not explain why some women prefer the same sex since that would imply that lesbianism is an abnormality (The latest edition of every psychiatrist’s bible, DSM IV-TR, no loger considers homosexuality as a mental disorder as compared to the earlier versions of this book, but in my opinion, is still very vague and conflicting with regard to its stand against Gender Identity Disorder) but rather by accepting that lesbians are a part of society that have yet to be given more importance, it provides watchers with a look at the internal conflicts and issues that they go through just like other average heterosexual individuals.
My sister and I are hooked and we would frequently drive away our brother from the living room once the beginning credits for The L Word start.
Watch it.
Still Searching for TheDancer
Because everybody I know has a Friendster account, one of the first persons I tried to search through Friendster’s search engine was an ex-boyfriend of mine from college whom I haven’t seen eversince I broke up with him during the last time I was at the big city.
TheDancer. The guy I broke up with before I started dating Rockstar.
I think he’s the only person I know who probably doesn’t own a Friendster account.
All my attempts to search for him through Friendster have failed. I even tried searching for him through Multiply and nothing. I figured, he wasn’t much of a computer savvy in college anyway – seeing as I had to frequently help him out with encoding his case presentations in simple Microsoft Word – but come on! It doesn’t take computer savvy to make a Friendster account, for God’s sake! I even came so far as to Google him but the only significant result I got was a list from the Professional Regulation Commission of those who passed the licensure exam for our old college course about a year after he graduated.
At least, now I know he’s finally passed his board exams.
Unfortunately, it only confirms that he has totally disappeared off my life and does not wish to be found.
I missed TheDancer. He was the first of the many players who traipsed in and out of my life. He was the first of the not-so-serious boyfriends I ever had. He was the first of the guys who treated me like crap but I continued seeing because there was nobody else around. He was the first of the guys I dated but knew I would never actually end up marrying.
He was also my first.
But that’s another story. LOL…
TheDancer and I met during my last month of internship at some rehabilitation center in Novaliches. He hailed from a private college just some distance from my own university. He was short, well-built, very masculine and cute when he grinned in that boyish mischievous way of his. It wasn’t love at first sight really. He frequently hung out with this other co-intern, ClosetKing, and one of my other co-interns, Fruity, had a crush on TheDancer. She displayed this in the most childish way possible: by constantly picking arguments with him. This did not do well with him, of course, as he ended up being frequently annoyed with her.
Our last day of rotation at the said rehabilitation, all the interns agreed on catching a movie together. TheDancer and I ended up sitting together, our elbows sharing one armchair. Sometime in the middle of the movie, our hands, which were initially hanging loosely an inch away from each other, brushed.
I ignored it. I figured it was an accident. A couple seconds later, I felt his pinkie brush against mine again. Still, I ignored it. But I didn’t move my hand away from his. And then he repeated it again.
I briefly looked at him from the corner of my eye. He was intently watching the movie.
So this time, I brushed my pinkie against his.
His expression never changed. But he brushed his pinkie against mine in return, this time a little longer than he’s supposed to.
I think I smiled.
Somehow, he ended up holding my hand during the rest of the movie. And we did all this with none of our friends ever noticing. There would definitely be a lot of teasing if anybody actually noticed it and we both did not want that. Plus I did not want to have Fruity thinking I was an Anaconda and stole her man. We separated as soon as the movie ended and the lights came on.
That same night, he texted me and told me he liked me. I told him I liked him too. Ergo, kami na (we’re going steady). Because he apparently didn’t want ClosetKing asking him a lot of irritating questions, he told me we should keep it on the down low whenever ClosetKing was around.
Which turns out to be almost all of the time as ClosetKing and TheDancer seemed to be practically joined at the hip.
At one time, ClosetKing, TheDancer and I practically got engaged in this severely complicated game of walking through the various streets and back alleys of Malate just to lose ClosetKing who was adamant in trying to join us. TheDancer it seems didn’t have the heart to tell him to bug off and he didn’t want to go off into a long explanation as to why he wanted to be with me alone, without ClosetKing’s company. ClosetKing must have noticed that I was spending a lot of time with TheDancer so he texted me if TheDancer was courting me. I told him no. He said that’s good because he was interested in me. I didn’t have the heart to tell him no so I just said I’m very flattered but I think we were better off as friends. I told TheDancer about the whole incident and he laughed his head off.
It seems that ClosetKing, who has been his bestfriend for the past few years, is infact inlove with him.
So, ClosetKing is gay.
Okay… that explained a lot.
So I played along with the entire charade between ClosetKing and TheDancer, letting ClosetKing think believe that I know he liked me too, being okay with TheDancer and I not letting ClosetKing know that we were dating. Often times, I would meet him after his duty at the hospital and we would avoid not being seen by ClosetKing together.
It was a really weird time of my life but ClosetKing was fun and flirty and was not complicated to be with so I stayed. He wasn’t as affectionate as I would’ve wanted to. He preferred being held by the elbow rather than by the hands. He was arrogant, a little bossy and was occasionally moody. We talked a lot on the phone and because I didn’t own one and he did, I frequently can be seen heading to a nearby public pay phone with my purse of P5 coins just to chat with him about his studies and making him answer hypothetical questions about our relationship. Because I owned a cellphone and he didn’t, I frequently had to be content with him sending me text messages from various unregistered numbers telling me to meet him somewhere and even waiting for him once for three hours at a McDonalds’ because he never actually got my reply at all. Because he lived one bus ride away from the big city, we didn’t see each other as often as I would’ve wanted and often times I had to entice him to head to the big city by telling him I was treating him for a movie and dinner which of course, I ended up paying for (Darn cheapskate that TheDancer!). Despite the fact that he had a temper, we rarely fought because whenever I would try to open up about certain incident that had made me annoyed with him, he had this way of making me laugh and forget about it before I even started telling him why I was angry in the first place.
He wasn’t the love of my life but I loved him, in one of those crazy I-don’t-know why ways.
When I finally told him that I was leaving the big city to finally go back home, he surprised me by saying the sweetest words I have ever heard come out of his mouth:
“If things were different and we were at an age when we could be more independent to make our own decisions, you [mistress] could have been the woman I would’ve thought of wanting to spend the rest of my life with.”
Such perfect timing. And he decides to tell me this just as I was about to leave the big city and return back at an indefinite period of time.
In all the seven months that we were together, he couldn’t even find the courage to tell me he loved me.
Arghhh, damn men! You all want what you can no longer have.
Ms. [Small City] 2000
As I juggled between endorsing patient’s history forms to the Internal Medicine resident, Doc J, pointing out the patients and a providing a quick summary of their chief complaints, their history, significant physical examination and management that I have given them so far, following his every command which entailed doing ECGs, writing laboratory requests and prescriptions, another patient came in. It was a female in her 20’s crying and breathing exaggeratedly, as she was wheeled in by her 20-something watcher.
I glanced at her briefly and triaged her in my mind. Hyperventilation. Needs only to calm down to get her respiratory rate to normal. Not quite a major emergency.
I quickly asked her what’s wrong and she and her watcher confirmed my initial diagnosis. I told her to try to relax first, try to breathe as deeply as she can and I’ll be with her as soon as I finished handling the more life-threatening cases.
(The best management in this case would have been to have her breath through a paper bag but since the hospital was managed by a cheapskate cost-cutting administrator, there were no paperbags (nor clean plastic ones) in sight and I had to contend with giving her verbal instructions to do deep breathing exercises. I had to improvise. Not my fault, I tell you.)
While I went about handling my more emergency cases, I could feel TheWatcher’s eyes looking at me from the periphery of my vision. I ignored him, rushing about continuously from one end to another of the ER as I juggled the various instructions that my resident barked at me. When the chaos of patients finally subsided, I found myself sitting at the desk beside Doc J and together, we extensively interviewed the hyperventilating girl together. He agreed with my diagnosis and asked her to continue doing the exercises. At this point, she was already somewhat calm but still crying so we didn’t discharge her yet.
The Watcher looked at me curiously. “Excuse me. Have we met before?”
I looked at him. Short, average-looking, teeth needs some major capping. “Uh, no.”
“Where did you study highschool?”
I was curt. “[Private school].”
“How about college? Did you graduate from [public university]?”
“Uh, no.”
“I know I’ve seen you before somewhere. Are you a Nursing graduate?”
“No.”
“Where are you studying now?”
“[Private school].”
“What course?”
“Medicine.”
At this point, Doc J, who was amused to no end as he listened in on our conversation, and continually witnessed how this guy seemed to make failed attempt after failed attempt of picking me up, decided to finally butt in. “She used to be Ms. [Small City] 2000.”
Which was, of course, not true. I have never been in nor won any beauty pageant, local or otherwise. I am probably the last person in the world who would want to demean myself by standing infront of a crowd in a two-piece, let people judge me for my external appearance rather than my IQ and say cheesy words like “I believe that love is a rosary, full of mystery. I thank you.” No offense to beauty pageant contestant wannabes reading this.
I laughed. The poor guy didn’t. He probably thought Doc J was serious. But it did finally shut him up.
*** UPDATE – I saw TheWatcher again a couple months after as I was waiting to pick up my cellphone when I had it repaired due to a computer virus at some shop in the mall. He kept looking at me, probably recognizing me again. I ignored him, pretending to look at everywhere else in that room except him, even when he stood right infront of me. No use acknowledging his presence and continuing another round of awkward chitchat. I wasn’t interested and even if I was, I would have preferred it if he just dropped the whole “Where have I seen you before?” crap and just come right out and ask me.
