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.
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.
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.
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.
Why My Friends Should Never Set Me Up
HottestMama - not to be confused with HotMama, because Hottest is so much hotter - was an old classmate of mine from highschool who has been my favorite gimik buddy and partner in crime for the recent past few years.
Before she got herself pregnant and ended up getting married, that is.
When I told her that I had been recently seeing a married man, her married sensibilities were horribly offended and thus, she took it upon herself to set me with someone else. Pronto! She then decided to text a friend of her husband, SomeGuy, whom she has been wanting to set me up with for quite some time.
Hottest Mama: Hey SomeGuy! Dis s d prfct tym to start txtn [mistress]
SomeGuy: Y?
Seriously guys, if you are single and you wanted to meet girls, never ask the person who wants to set you up with her WHY you should go out with her friend. It’s a buzzkill. Do you even have to ask? It’s not as if she’ll actually want to set you up with someone really bad. Are you gay? Do you not want to meet someone special? Don’t you even want to get laid? If you weren’t interested in meeting someone new, just say so. Simple English never hurt anyone.
Seeing that SomeGuy was a no-show, she decided to tap the testosterone pool in her workplace and finally aimed in a winner at a guy we’ll call TheNurse. Not as hot as HotNurse but a nurse still.
The guy started texting me and I found out we both came from the same highschool, only he was two years younger than I was, he came from a family of nurses (like 89.99% of people in this darn country), he regularly watches the same cheesy girly-girly soap opera as I did and he used to go to the gym regularly but has stopped, hence he is now frequently teased by co-workers because he apparently resembled the protagonist in Kung Fu Panda.
And while we’re at it, if a girl tells you that, “Hey! I haven’t seen that movie yet but I’ve wanted to watch it,” and you know very well that said movie is showing at movie theaters, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she wants you to ask her if she’d like to watch the movie with you. Get a clue, for God’s sake.
But I disgress.
TheNurse didn’t exactly text me as much as I would have wanted him to in order to ensure me that he was definitely interested. But all in all, despite the fact that TheNurse wasn’t a great text conversationalist, I did find a few common interests so I mentally filed him as a “Maybe” in my mental file folder of guys I might consider going out with in the future if they asked me.
Now, like everything else in this country, dating nowadays utilizes two very important tools: texting and the Internet, or Friendster in particular. As my profile was private, he then asked me to add him up into my friends list so that he can view my complete profile and browse through my pictures. I did so the next day.
And then he just disappeared off the face of my inbox.
I didn’t hear from him anymore.
I started thinking, what the f**k? Was he intimidated by all the things I’ve written in my profile? Or maybe he thought I wasn’t pretty enough. I don’t think I looked that bad in my pictures. I actually looked fantastic in most as I tried to post only those which showed my good sides. The only ones who seemed dubious were those that were uploaded by a good friend which I just couldn’t find the heart to delete even if I looked like crap because I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings if she noticed that I didn’t post them.
I started becoming insecure about my looks. I looked at my photos and began finding fault in every picture.
This picture makes me look fat.
This one makes me look like I just woke up.
This shows my chubby cheeks.
This one, I just look average and boring.
And then I clicked on HIS profile and saw him. The 1”x1”-sized default pic that was so blurred it was probably taken using an old 1 megapixel cameraphone, the numerous pictures shared with about 30 others of his highschool classmates probably taken 10 years ago, making his face look the size of a sesame seed, the only clear picture of him showing him with three other friends probably taken 5 years ago when he was still regularly going to the gym as he seemed to still look very much in shape, the stupid idiotic childish things he wrote in his profile that would have been funny for me, if I was still in highschool, that is.
And I felt better.
It wasn’t such a loss after all.
It’s A Sign
It’s A Sign
I believe in God.
I don’t exactly attend mass regularly and I almost always forget to say my nightly prayers before I fall asleep. Still, I believe in a higher being who knows everything that we do and is responsible for everything that happens in our life.
So when HotNurse’s motorcycle gets a flat tire for the 3rd time since we started seeing each other, I knew it was a sign, that God was watching me and telling me to stop sleeping with someone who has a girlfriend.
“Shit!” he cursed, as he put the vehicle to a stop.
“We have a flat again?”
“Yeah. But I think there’s a nearby repair shop around here somewhere.”
As we waited for the repairman to do his thing on the motorcycle, I looked at HotNurse inquisitively. “Didn’t you just have the tires replaced last week?”
“Yeah, I know! I don’t know why this is happening to me! A couple of weeks ago, the front wheel got a flat. A week ago, the chains broke and I had to replace them. I had to change the tires as well, since I was already at the repair shop anyway. And now, this!”
“Haven’t you realized we’ve never been out together without your motorcycle falling out on us?”
He laughed. “I know!”
“Maybe God is trying to tell us something.”
“Like what?”
“That we’re both committing a sin against your girlfriend and we’re not even supposed to be seeing each other anymore.”
Hot Nurse didn’t laugh. I guess he didn’t find it as funny as I did.
Chronicles of My First Blind Date
I was out with JR, an old classmate of mine from medical school, and some of our classmates for a nice dinner. He quit medical school after his 2nd year and like many others, was currently taking up Nursing. It had been a long time since we’ve seen him so, we definitely had a lot of catching up to do. When I told him I was single, he immediately wanted to set me up with his friend on an impromptu blind date. He believed that we would really hit it off.
“Come on, [mistress]. He’s a classmate of mine from Nursing.”
“How old is he?” I asked. I didn’t want to be dating someone who’s still in his first few years of college.
“About my age. He’s a graduate of BS Biology and teaches a few courses at the College of Arts and Sciences.”
Hmmm… Interesting. “He must be really smart then.”
“Yes. That’s why I know you too are just going to be perfect for each other!”
I was still feeling a bit skeptical. “So, what is he into, aside from Nursing and teaching?”
“Well, he loves James Blunt and can sing really well, if my memory from our last Videoke session serves me right. You’ll like him.”
I wasn’t such a big James Blunt fan except for the song “Goodbye, My Lover” which basically has the same tune as all the other songs in his album, no offense to James Blunt fans who are reading this. But I do love Videoke and guys who can carry a tune. Still, I had my second doubts about being set up.
“I don’t know, JR…” I’ve never been set up on a blind date before. I’ve always preferred meeting a guy the traditional way and finding out myself first-hand if he was worthy enough for a first date or not.
“Come on, he just lives around here. I can just text him and he’ll be here in less than a minute.”
I still had doubts and I certainly looked it.
“And he’s quite good-looking too,” he added, winking at me.
I was sold. “Okay,” I told him.
A couple minutes later, JR’s friend, Chinito, arrived. He was casually wearing a loose polo shirt, denim jeans and sandals. Very casual, as if he just took the closest thing he could get from his closet and dressed up in a hurry. For some reason, I didn’t feel any sparks between the two of us. Could it be because he wasn’t that cute? On the contrary, he was. Very cute chinky eyes, curly hair, nice teeth, well-toned physique. An 8.5 in a scale of 1-10. Could it be because he was smarter than me? Nahhh… I enjoy making conversation with smart guys. They’re very stimulating. I can spend hours with a guy who has a lot to say and not be bored than with someone whose best literary reads are limited to FHM. Could it be because he was cynical about love? Hmmm… maybe. A little. But then, I think I am just as cynical about love as he is.
Yes, I too believe that sometimes love shits you in the face.
Actually, when I thought about it, I think the reason why there were no sparks is because he seemed too good for me. Not that I was into bad boys – okay, fine, who am I kidding? I AM into bad boys. They give me a panty a puddle just by looking at me – but although he does drink socially and all, like me, I don’t think he’s the type who will be compatible with someone as complicated as me. He’s like Rockstar without the temper, the ego and the emotional hang-ups. I can already see a lifetime of forbiddens if ever I ended up with him. I will be too much of an emotional baggage for someone like him. Eventually, he’ll end up being the kind of guy who will try to set my life straight when in fact, as of the moment, I don’t see myself as someone whose life needs straightening.
Some might think that I’m just backing out from something that might be good for me. Or that maybe I still have commitment issues that I have to work out… Whoah! Commitment issues! I’m sounding like I’m 30 already… But seriously, I’m not that picky when it comes to guys. If a guy is into me, even if he’s not my ideal kind of guy, as long as the chemistry is there, why not? Getting to know a person is a lifelong process anyway so why bother with hang-ups as to a guy’s height, his built, his looks, his personality, his attitude, his vices or his quirks? Those are the things that make him unique as an individual. Personally, I find those character flaws the things that make a person more deviant from the norm and thus, make him more desirable.
But chemistry, that’s a totally different thing. You can’t work with something that’s just not there in the first place. You can change everything else, the looks, the personality, the quirks but once the sparks aren’t there, what’s the point of trying to work things out?
TheRock once told me that maybe I’m always confusing chemistry with lust or simple physical attraction. But on the contrary, I can be incredibly into someone even if he’s not that physically attractive. Or I can also not like a guy even if he’s the school heartthrob or the most good-looking person in the whole world. Chemistry isn’t equatable to physical attraction. It’s an inkling of a possibility of mutually-shared romantic interest between two people. It certainly isn’t something you can just force to develop between a man and a woman.
If it’s not there, then, it really wouldn’t be there.
Actually, when I think about it, I’m kind of disappointed that I don’t like him that much. I mean, my blind date was really really cute and really really smart. He’s a good catch! But if we would end up together I’d be this little devil who will spin his world upside down and I will always feel guilty when I’m with him because I would always be unable to keep my hands off all things forbidden.
Tsk, tsk, tsk… too bad. Why didn’t I feel any sparks in the first place? Why, Lord, why?
There wasn’t any chemistry at all that we didn’t even act on any pretenses that we were supposed to be flirting with each other. I exude flirtatious vibes when I’m interested in someone, albeit subtle, and a guy usually picks it up easily if I liked them back. I don’t think he felt it too. No numbers were exchanged that night. I did thank JR for introducing me to Chinito. I told him Chinito was a good catch but I don’t think there were sparks between us. But he wasn’t that bad. I’ll probably be seeing him at the hospital next year when he starts his hospital duties. I told him to tell Chinito that if he ever needs to walk on the dark side and wants someone to spin his world upside down, just text me.
Of course, I was only half-kidding.
*** UPDATE – I bumped into Chinito a few months later during a night-out with friends. It took two of my closest girlfriends for me to realize that he wasn’t really all that. In fairness, he did slim down a lot and he looked pretty stressed-out… Arghhh!! Who am I kidding? He does have an effeminate air around him! I like my boys very masculine and naughty. Must be why we didn’t click in the first place. LOL.
Young, Drunk, and Holding Hands to a little Yeng Constantino
4:00 PM
It was a lazy Friday afternoon. I honestly wanted to waste my night just surfing the Internet. I had just woken up from my post-24-hour hospital duty nap and I intended to spend it lazily at home, in my most comfortable shorts and T-shirt. But then, a classmate of mine from medical school who was also one of my housemates at the community started the cascade of tonight’s events:
Wer on our way hom. Cocolee has sum pipol he wants u girls 2 mit
I wanted to hide.
I’ve been set up by friends so many times I was probably a master in blind dates. And it always ends the same. We remain nothing but acquaintances. Occasionally, I bump into one during my nights out and I sometimes pretend that I don’t see him or I hide, afraid to find out if he even remembered me. One in particular just disappeared out of the face of my inbox without any warning only to see his Friendster default pic a month later with him and his new girlfriend posing infront of his cellphone cam.
But I disgress.
So, the guys arrived and I finally met Beckham, the one my classmates were apparently setting me up with. I reluctantly entertained the guy for my classmates’ sake. In all fairness, it surprised me that he wasn’t actually as bad as I expected. He wasn’t shy but he wasn’t very talkative either, which was a good thing because I usually get bored with shy guys who don’t talk and I could not tolerate guys who are too talkative. I don’t like it when you have uncomfortable gaps of silence and I absolutely hate the skipping rope conversations: The ones wherein you’re just waiting for the other person to catch his breath in between sentences, just so you can inject your own lines into the conversations.
He wasn’t from around here and was only in town to celebrate the festivities for the day with his cousins and relatives, whom he was currently staying with. He was two years younger than me and physically, okay… he was quite good-looking, I admit.
This could be interesting, I said to myself.
6:00 PM
Despite my adamant protests of not wanting to get out of the house, my classmates were still able to drag me out of it, into the guy’s SUV, and into the house of his relatives for a scrumptious dinner. Beckham took it upon himself to be an ever-attentive host as he personally served me various utensils, presented me with viands and made sure I was not without drinks. He continued to regal me with tales about his hometown, his college days, even his highschool days before dinner and during the post-dinner drinking session. My ever-familiar friend-slash-foe, Emperador Brandy, was the choice drink of the night. Remembering how much I had gotten acquainted with our toilet bowl because of this traitorous friend-slash-foe, I knew I was going to have to pass up the alcohol shots if I wanted to continue making a good impression.
But not after downing at least one glass though.
I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Emperador Brandy. So, sue me.
10:00 PM
People always said that when you talk to a drunk guy, he will always tell you the truth. I honestly had no idea if he was telling me the truth. I couldn’t believe that he too believed that one’s youth should be spent experiencing the good as well as the bad, for the simple purpose of not having any regrets when one gets old and looks back on how he lived his youth. It seemed impossible to me that he too watched the same cheesy soap opera as I did and that his favorite movie was “If Only,” a major tear-jerking chick-flick, which also turns out to be one of my favorite movies. I couldn’t believe we had so much in common that I had to keep myself from asking him, “Are you for real?”
He loved talking to me, So much so that we spent the night talking animatedly to each other, away from the rest of our friends. Not that I’m bragging but I can usually carry great conversations. I knew I wasn’t exceptionally drop-dead gorgeous, and not that 36-24-36 kind of sexy either, so I always try to make up for what I lack physically by making a guy comfortable enough when talking to me. And when the guy knows how to carry a good conversation himself, it usually makes for a very interesting thing I like to call “chemistry.”
I think the plan backfired.
Somewhere along the road, he had gotten too sodden enough that we were conversing as if we haven’t just met a few hours ago but more like months or years. This newly found closeness that he had conjured up in his mind was evident with the way he maneuvered the conversation to rapid transitions of anecdotes about his Nursing hospital duties, his past girlfriends, his feelings towards me, his haircut, his highschool teachers and even to sleeping together. I was pleased, flattered, embarrassed, uncomfortable and freaked out at the same time. It amused me to no end that he seemed to be the male version of myself two years ago. Only intoxicated. It would have been a good thing since I can’t resist someone who lives by the same principles as I did, except for the fact that he was totally incapacitatingly inebriated. Inexplicably wading deep sh*t in the throes of alcohol drunkenness.
Beckham was so relaxed and comfortable around me that by the end of the night, he was talking to me with his face practically six inches within my own face. There was really some serious invasion of private bubble space. When we sat down side by side, my upper arm was practically in his chest and the side of my breast was close to brushing his upper arm. I never minded really but I wasn’t that comfortable either. Contrary to what most people will think, I am not THAT liberated. What made the situation more amusing was when he started holding my hands, swaying them while walking, as if we have been boyfriend-girlfriend for a long time.
Add that to the fact that we were doing so infront of my landlord’s teenage children who supposedly looked up to me as a role model, my conservative housemates and the class’ two worst jokesters of all time, who will never make me live this experience down for as long as they lived. I was incredibly embarrassed and just wanted to stand in the middle of the highway and wait for a passing bus to hit me, most especially when one of the jokesters started singing a song made popular by Yeng Constantino.
“Hawak-kamay… Di kita iiwan sa paglakbay… “ (Holding hands… I will never leave you on your journey…)
Arghhh…
And to think, I wasn’t even drunk.
