Badly In Need of Listerine
TheRider and I knew each other from the same hospital where I used to work. He was a friend of HotVolunteer. Despite the fact that we have seen each other occasionally around the hospital, he had never approached me personally, except for the occasional “Hi, doc” at the Dietary. He started out as JaneDoe’s textmate and when she obviously wasn’t into him, as boys were in the popular custom of passing cellphone numbers of cute girls they knew, my cellphone number was passed from HotVolunteer to ShyVolunteer then finally, into the hands of TheRider.
He didn’t have HotNurse’s hotness nor flirting charisma. In fact, TheRider was a very shy guy, quiet most of the time, and he was one of those guys who were into constant texting, the type who goes:
Hav u eaten? Iv eatn alredy. Dis rice & fish s gud. Im dun eating. How bout u? WUD? How bout now, wud? Im toking w frends. U? Wud? Im hir @ d 2nd flor of d hospi. Now Im hir @ d 3rd flor of d hosp. Now Im in d 4th flor. Wat bout u, WUD? [Mistress]? R u bz? Its 7 pm, hav u eaten alrdy? Im havin chcken. Im dun now. WUD? Wat bout now, wud?
I had just gotten out of a severely confusing and unrewarding relationship and found him to be the most convenient rebound guy. Hence, when he started courting me, I went for it, thinking, Hey, what the hell. He seems like a nice guy. I know he’ll treat me well.
As all nice guys go, it takes some time for them to be comfortable enough around girls. I was in the throes of another new love so I looked very much forward to that first kiss with him. I remembered one particular time when I wanted him to kiss me but I ended up annoyed with him, looking up at the sky instead and watching the clouds change colors, as he was not making his moves. AT ALL.
Until one day, I finally told him that it’s about time that he should start kissing me.
The dam broke.
As he slowly brought his head down to mine and his lips finally parted, I sensed that something was off. It wasn’t his technique. It wasn’t the way he rolled his tongue. It wasn’t the way he lapped on my lower lips. It was something else.
Out of all the five senses, it was that of my olfactory that was viciously waving the red flag.
He had HALITOSIS.
Now, as a doctor, I know that most people who have bad breath do not realize that they suffer from this disease because the stench most frequently originates from the back of one’s throat. A simple round of brushing cannot eliminate the offensive odor easily since this is usually a result of a combination of decaying teeth and chronic neglect of deep gargling as well as brushing at the frequently neglected posterior and undersides of one’s tongue.
I, at first, thought that maybe it was me. And was I mortified!
So, I immediately headed to my dentist, had my teeth cleaned and my aching molars removed, regularly gargled and brushed my teeth, including all sides and crevices of my tongue. Thousands of pesos later, I was finally confident that there was no way that the kissing offense was going to happen.
Until of course, I ended up making out again with TheRider.
It was HIM alright.
He was the one who had bad breath. He was the one who was making me gag as I pretended to be seriously enjoying the Frenchkissing. He was the one who didn’t brush his teeth or gargled often enough.
After the said incident, I started noticing small things about TheRider which used to be insignificant enough for me to take notice, like how he never brushes his teeth after a meal even when we’re at his own house and we just had a meal together, or how he wasn’t conscious about his breath even after we’ve just spent two hours not speaking to each other during a movie at a cinemahouse, or that sometimes, there’d be actual food stuck in his teeth.
The stupid things we ignore when we’re inlove.
When he decided that he wanted to break up because of certain reasons that had nothing to do with me (he apparently wanted to save me from being involved in some scandal he was involved in), I simply let him.
No regrets, no drama, no crying nor pleading infront of him.
I was finally free of him.
I was just relieved that I can finally enjoy breathing fresh air again.
*** UPDATE – TheRider did try to get back with me but halitosis aside, a guy who thinks he’s being a hero by dumping you to save you from the rumors? That’s just being cowardly. I want a man who can stand up for me. Throughout our relationship, I felt like I was settling for something less than I deserved simply because I was afraid of growing old alone. Besides, how long will I be able to stand kissing him before I end up telling him that I wasn’t enjoying the bad breath all? I mean, seriously, guys. Brush your teeth regularly and use mouthwash, for God’s sake!
Hot Volunteer Part Deux
I don’t really have a lot of flirty moves.
I wasn’t really such a girly-girl growing up so I wasn’t able to develop the natural instinct of a beautiful girl who knows how to captivate the attention of every male in the room with every flip of her hair, every toss of her bangs, every cross of her legs or every angling of her body.
You can say, I was an ugly duckling most of my life and I only started making up for lost time by the time I was in my mid 20-s.
I didn’t have any of those flirting skills but I knew what limited skills I had:
I was a good conversationalist.
I have a great sense of humor.
I’m smart and very witty.
And I can give someone a hard-on just by kissing him.
LOL. Just kidding…
But seriously, in line with that, whenever I was interested with someone, I did my best to play around with the skills that I did have. After our eyeball at the ER, HotVolunteer continued texting me regularly and we began to start “accidentally” seeing each other. He worked nightshift so after my 32-hour duty, I would take a really long nap at the Intern’s Quarters and by the time I wake up, around 8-9 PM, he would have already arrived at the hospital for his night duty. I would take my bath, then, we would meet up outside, have a smoke or two and I would finally go home. Late at night, during the nights that I was on-duty, and the ER was quiet with no patients to attend to, we would frequently hung-out at the waiting area and talk about our experiences working in the hospital, common friends, highschool, his girlfriend (who turned out to be someone I knew and knew me as well) and the like. He once waited for me outside the ward and we had a quick stroll together as we walked together back to the OPD. One time, I invited him over to join me at the Intern’s Quarters while I was having a quick supper. He was a tall guy and the Intern’s Quarters was cramped so it was no wonder that the opportunity to take advantage of the situation crossed my mind.
So I waited for him to make a move.
And waited.
And waited.
But there was none.
The thing is, like most typical Filipino males, HotVolunteer was a better flirt on text messages rather than in person.
So, by the time we walked out of the Intern’s Quarters, I was disappointed, annoyed and impatient with him. A couple minutes later, we started texting again.
U lukd rly sexy wen u removd ur wyt blazer at d Intrn’s Qrtrs
I rolled my eyes, still miffed at him.
I ws hopng u wud make a muv.
Hehe… I wantd 2. But I wsnt sur how ud react.
Yah ryt. I ws jst w8tng 4 u 2 kis me.
Rily?
Yes. I wantd u 2 kis me.
Sori. If I only knew.
Yah, wel. D momnt hs pasd.
Hw bout we try agen l8r?
I grinned mischievously. I can just hear the fishing pole winder whizzing by as I reeled my catch with the bait so easily, hook, line, sinker and all.
We cnt. No prvcy. Derl probably b sum1 slipng in d qrtrs l8r.
Hw bt outsyd our HQ? Ders a corner der wer no1 can c us.
Ok… So, I supos wer goin 2 b kising wyl standing. Bt ur so tall. I ges I hav 2 tiptoe 2 rich ur mouth.
Hehe. I’l stoop down. Don’t wori.
Ok.
Wat do I do w my hands?
Hahaha… Wat do u min?
M I alowd 2 touch u anywer?
I sighed. Guys… You give them a foot and they expect to get the entire leg. He better not be thinking about going to 2nd or 3rd base!
Yes. Hehe. But nower below my neck rgion.
Hehe. Ok… M knda xcitd thnkng abt it
Me 2.
So, sometime in the evening, when there were no more patients to see, just around the time that under ordinary circumstances, I would have gone to sleep at the Intern’s Quarters instead of meeting him, I finally texted him.
Im fri now. U?
My companions r stil awake. Bt I cn sneak out. Tx me if ur ryt outsyd d HQ alrdy
When I got to our meeting area, I texted him that I had arrived and he came out, smiling flirtatiously.
“Your friends?”
“Trying to sleep.”
“You sure they won’t wake up and walk in here?”
“I’ll hold the door in case one of them tries to.”
I smiled. I tugged on the corner of his shirt and pulled his head down to mine. “Come here…”
And we kissed. It wasn’t as earth-shattering as I would have wanted but it felt nice. He was gentleman enough not to cop a feel and he kept one hand on the doorknob and the other at the wall behind me. I got the reaction I wanted, I could feel it through his denim jeans – Oh! I forgot to tell you. HotVolunteer was a guy who never wears any underwear. He says it constricts him and he wanted to keep those little HotVolunteer juniors cool and fertile for future use someday – and we kept on kissing like that for a few minutes, with me occasionally faking a seductive little “Mmmmm…” once in a while.
Until he felt someone tugging on the doorknob from the other side.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds for us to separate and look oh so innocent before one of his friends opened the door and found us talking with at least 3 meters distance between the two of us.
“Oh, hey, this is my friend, Doc [mistress]. Doc, this is Some-name-I-totally-forgot.”
“Hi,” I smiled at him.
“Hello.”
“So, I was just about to show her our HQ,” HotVolunteer opened the door widely and I peered inside their offices, pretending to look very interested. “Oh, it’s actually quite small. And looks even more furnished than our own Quarters.”
“Yeah… So, what’s up, bro? Did we get a call for a run?”
“Yeah… They’re inside trying to get more information.”
“Oh, okay.”
I realized that was my cue to exit. “I guess I’ll have to go. I’ll see you around, HotVolunteer. You two, Some-name-I-totally-forgot.”
And then I left the boys to get ready for their run.
HotVolunteer and I dated for a few times after that but it didn’t develop into an actual serious relationship. For one, he was just not as suave in person as he was in his text messages. There wasn’t really enough chemistry for a relationship based on flirtatious text messages that didn’t transfer well to a more captivating conversation once you’re actually talking to that person face-to-face. Second, he was in a long-term relationship with a girl whom he had been dating since college and who was in her 4th year of medical school at the same school where I came from. The implications of me breaking them up would be disastrous to my reputation and would most likely warrant me a possible office call to the Dean of Student Affairs office, upon which I will not be able to justify my actions as morally as I can.
So in time, the text messaging faltered and the dates stopped. I started dating one of his friends from the same team and HotVolunteer and I remained friends although we simply stopped flirting altogether. We promised never to tell anyone about what happened between us because none of us wanted to pay the price for the possible consequences. He surprisingly kept his end of the bargain because the whole time that I was dating his friend, my boyfriend was unaware of the extent of my flirtations with HotVolunteer and he figured, we were just simple textmates before. Nothing more, nothing less.
But HotVolunteer and I will always have that one time where we shared an exciting secret kiss one cold lazy night in September.
- Talk about the ultimate kissing thrillseekers –
Message Sent: The Textmate
Texting in the Philippines is not just a leisure, but has become a way of life.
Thus, with the coming of the texting era, comes the birth of relationships developed through dating textmates.
If you want to read more regarding this how people fall inlove through textmates and the like, I suggest reading a friend’s dissertation paper entitled Texting Love:
An Exploration of Text Messaging as a Medium for Romance in the Philippines. He has some nice pieces regarding how people make use of current technological advancements to develop budding romantic relationships.
I too, have had my share of textmates I have dated. I even dated one exclusively for some time. But one of the very first ones that I won’t forget was this guy I call HotVolunteer.
I was talking to the anesthesiologist-on-duty while preparing to be the 2nd assist during one particular surgery when I received a message from an unregistered number on my cellphone.
Helo doc. U don’t kno me but can we b frends?
I would’ve ignored the message, figuring it was a randomly sent message by a bored teenager looking for a textmate, but the title “doc” got to me.
He knew my profession. Therefore, this was not sent randomly.
He most probably knew me.
Hus dis?
Just sum1 hu wants 2 get 2 kno u mor.
Okay, under ordinary circumstances, I would probably have been more cordial. But I was tired, hungry, has not had any sleep for the past 32 hours, and just eagerly waiting for my duty to end so I wasn’t in the best mood to put my flirting face on.
If u do not tel me hu u r, I wil stop replying 2 u.
It worked.
Dis is just ur secret admirer from [the hospital’s emergency medical team].
My tired weary heart softened. The word “secret admirer” never fails to make any girl’s heart turn to mush, especially when you still don’t know who that person is and can still imagine him as a gorgeous Colin Farrell look-alike with Tom Cruise’s exuberance in Oprah, Hugh Jackson’s manners in What Women Want and whoever-was-paired-with-Julia-Roberts-whose-name-I-totally-forgot’s grasp of romance in Pretty Woman.
At this day and age, I have started to think that nobody refers to themselves as a secret admirer anymore. Those words have disappeared along with “sweeping off my feet” and “riding off into the sunset.” It was a semi-archaic concept that I still somehow found incredibly romantic. After all, nothing says romance than being the center of an unrequited adoration by someone from a distance, without their knowledge.
He had me at hello. Or rather, helo.
Thus started the relationship between me and my textmate, HotVolunteer. We both belonged to the same cellular network so the texting was very convenient. You get to send unlimited number of text messages for 24 hours to any number from the same cellular network for as little as P20 (or about 50 cents in US dollars). He would text me frequently, almost staker-ish, telling me how cute I looked today in my diagonally-striped low-cut wrap-around blouse, or how he liked my hair better when I tied my hair up, or how I smelled so good when I passed by him a few minutes ago or how I looked so adorable in the morning, after I had woken up from a short frequently interrupted sleep during duty. I didn’t have any idea who he was at first and he didn’t want me to know which one he was from among the many volunteers of the [hospital’s emergency medical team]. I suppose it was partly because he was enjoying annoying me, rather than his excuse that he wanted us to get to know each other more before he finally introduces himself to me.
U luk tyrd. Do u fil slipy, [mistress]?
He texted me while I was just trying to get some quick shut-eye while lying my head on the desk of the ER-Surgery area which I was manning while on duty.
Can I hav sum Coke Lyt?
He texted me while I was taking a quick swig from a can of softdrink in between managing my patients.
Im outside @ d quadrangle, wer training d new voluntrs.
He texted me when I asked him where he was. When I looked outside, there were about 20 or so guys in the quadrangle, participating in the training. Surely, no chance of me figuring out which one of the 20 is the one who has been texting me.
I just pasd by d ER. I was d 1 in d red shirt.
And he tells me this useless information 5 minutes after he passed by the ER.
I played along with it for a while, since truly he was a really good flirt with the text messages, and it brightened my day to know that a secret admirer is out there, checking me out, while I immersed myself busily into the ins and outs of managing toxic patients in the hospital.
But the truth is, I kind of had an idea who he was.
A couple months prior, I spotted a male co-intern of mine, Cocolee, talking to this cute, tall, hot guy who I will later see frequently around the hospital, since he was after all, one of the volunteers of [hospital’s emergency medical team].When Cocolee saw me, he called my name. I’m generally quite shy around good-looking strangers, plus, Cocolee has been on the rampage of wanting to set me up with some of his brothers from the fraternity (There are only about 20-plus of us in our batch, thus, we’re all very close. So close that those in the batch who have boyfriends/girlfriends find it their responsibility to make sure that all the single good-looking females in the batch should be in a serious relationship as well. Therefore, Cocolee and the rest of the boys have taken it upon themselves to find me a boyfriend, even if I didn’t ask them to), so, in the effort of wanting to avoid an awkward situation, I turned to nod at the two boys and smiled genuinely, and then I proceeded to hide myself inside the Intern’s Quarters. I totally forgot about that certain episode until HotVolunteer tells me that he got my number from a friend of his who is also a co-intern of mine. Hoping that the tall exotic cutie that Cocolee was talking to a few months ago was the same guy who was texting me, I approached Cocolee and asked him if he had given my number to somebody else.
It turned out that he did, to HotVolunteer himself, who apparently asked for my number because he had a major crush on me.
It was like highschool all over again. I found myself doing a standing-on-(L)-foot-with-®-hip-and-knee-flexed-with-®-shoulder-and-elbow-flexed maneuver while yelling a resounding “Yes!” on my mind.
So, knowing that I wasn’t texting back to some random stranger but was instead replying to this guy that I too liked, I continued entertaining him and pretending I had no idea who he was, even when there were plenty of times that he would stand nearby and just watch me as I suture some patient’s wound or dress a sad-looking abrasion.
For three weeks, our witty exchange of flirty text messages persisted.
Flirting through text messages really is an art form. There are guys who know how to make a girl look forward to the next message so that she just simply cannot help herself but reply back and there are those who just don’t know how to hold the girl’s interest and can’t partake in an interesting conversation to save their life. HotVolunteer knew the perfect mix of interest, romance and sexiness and conveyed it well with every text message he sent my way.
Until one day, I, the ever impatient one, told him that if he didn’t introduce himself to me by the next hour, I will stop texting him back. He finally relented and asked me to wait for him at the ER-Surgery desk.
As I waited on my desk for him to show up, I hastily ran a comb through my hair. Before I knew it, the cute, tall, hottie and his chubby friend walked into the ER, shyly about to approach me. I remembered thinking, Please don’t mess with my head God and tell me that the chubby one is the one who’s actually texting me. And then, HotVolunteer smiled at me, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
“Ahmmm… hi, doc. I’m HotVolunteer, the one who’s been texting you. Hehe.”
I laughed. “So, I’m right after all. I knew it was you.”
And that was how the evolution of my textmate to potential date material started.
