Marriage Is Not An Option. Yet.

DocS was the one of the deans of the medical school where I came from. Because he was a member of a family-owned educational institution, he asked me and some of my classmates to help him conduct the annual physical examination of all of the elementary and highschool students of the said educational institution. We all rode in his van and he drove us towards the said institution, with me sitting in the front seat with him while the rest of my classmates sat at the back. As he started grilling us about school, the review, my former highschool classmate who is a niece of his, our conversation shifted to the more personal and interesting questions.

“So, [Mistress], when are you getting married?”

I laughed. “Di ko pa alam, DocS. Di ko pa po iniisip yan sa ngayon.”

“Why not? You should start thinking about settling down already.”

A polite smile was my only reply.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

My classmates laughed from the back. They were all aware of my sordid stories of the men who had come in and out of my life. “Uhhh… no.”

“Why not? Didn’t you have a boyfriend when I interviewed you during your application to the medical school?”

Uhhh… that was eons of years ago, I wanted to tell him. But instead I just smiled.

“And I think I saw you before with some guy, I just can’t remember when it was.”

“Which one, doc?” I asked him. After which my classmates laughed. They thought I have just incriminated myself to one of the deans from our school by implying that I was a slut.

“What? So you have had many boyfriends?”

I simply laughed him off and ignored his question.

Darna then whispered to me jokingly that I should just keep my mouth shut because I am forgetting that I was talking to the Dean of Student Affairs, who was the henchman for knowing the personal stories and reputations of all medical students in the medical school.

So, how many really is many? And how many boyfriends is appropriate enough? How many boyfriends will a girl have had to be labeled a slut? Does having had a number of boyfriends, regardless of whether or not I was monogamous to them (I was, by the way, 100% of the time!), of whether or not I slept with them, or whether or not I was truly madly deeply inlove with them, label me a slut? Does the simple fact that the number of guys whom I have called “My Boyfriend” are more than the number of fingers in my one hand evidence enough to categorize me as a slut?

I do not really consider myself a slut. Yes, I have had numerous relationships, a lot more than I would care to but I regretted none of them. I did not sleep with all of them. I do not wish to tell the actual number of boyfriends I have had but rest assured that I can still count them using the fingers in my hands. I will admit though that I have only fallen truly deeply madly inlove thrice in my life.

I once heard in some show at the Discovery Channel that a person will fall inlove about an average of three times in his entire lifetime.

So, does this mean that three is the magic number?

You tell me.