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.
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!
Rain Part Deux
I eventually got used to the Frenchkissing.
But the thing about kissing that way is, once you started doing that, eventually it has to lead to something more. Your partner looks forward to covering the rest of the bases and wants to accomplish that soon. A day before I was about to fly home for semestral break, Rain and I went to watch a movie. As we kissed in the dark, he started putting his hands around my face. Eventually, he started kissing my earlobe and neck region and when his hand started going lower, aiming for my breasts, I finally panicked and grabbed his hand to stop him.
Repeatedly. As one failed attempt just made him want to do another.
And another.
And still another.
While I continually refused to let him.
It got to a point that I didn’t want him to even kiss me anymore, because it will only give him an opportunity to try to attempt to put his hand inside my shirt again. But I never got mad at him, just kept stopping him whenever he tried to cop a feel. When we left the moviehouse, it was as if nothing out of the ordinary happened and we did not even discuss the incident except for his passing comment that he was sleepy and that next time, we should sleep together in a place somewhere in Sta. Mesa. I mumbled yes, not really thinking much about it, assuming that sleeping together meant relaxing and simply talking with each other while resting our weary backs in a bed until we actually literally fall asleep, and I was completely unaware then that Sta. Mesa was filled with a lot of cheap motels that offered plenty of short-time bargains.
As I went through my vacation, I pondered how I was going to approach my situation with Rain. I was curious, yes, but I wasn’t ready for all that touching the breasts kind of thing. He was just going too fast for me, who hasn’t had much experience in this field. I was hoping we wouldn’t get to the touching of erogenous zones until after two to three months of us dating but clearly, this wasn’t going to be the case with Rain. Plus, I didn’t really love him enough for me to actually want to do these things with him. I needed a certain level of comfort to be able to even consider doing these things with a guy and I certainly wasn’t feeling it with him. Until finally, I realized that the best way for me to get out of this situation was to break up with him.
When I got back to the big city, I started being cold and I refused to take his calls. When he finally cornered me at home one Sunday evening, I didn’t even want to prolong the agony with useless chit-chat.
“Hey, I’ve been calling you up again and again. Why didn’t you return my calls?”
“I’ve been busy, Rain.”
“So, how have you been? I missed you, you know. Are we still on for mass tonight?”
“Listen, Rain, we need to break up.”
“What?”
“I’ve realized that I never really loved you in the first place.”
I think his jaw must have done some major dropping. His eyes looked slightly red. I don’t know if it was from holding back tears or from smoking pot (my cousins suspected that he probably smoked pot considering that his eyes looked partially shot most of the time and he lived in the next street from ours, where a lot of drug addicts apparently took residence).
He finally stood up from his seat. “So this is it then?”
“Yes.”
I really didn’t know of any comforting words to say to him. Plus I didn’t want to. I just wanted to get out of the relationship and get a clean break from him. The truth is, that was one of the most difficult things I had to do – to be heartless and a complete bitch to a guy who thought I was inlove with him. I’ve always been a nice girl, peace-loving, non-confrontational. Much as I might have toyed with Rain’s feelings a bit, making him think that I was inlove with him this whole time, I could have been nicer to him during the break-up. But I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea that there could still be any chance if he actually begged me. I seriously just wanted him to get out of my life so I can finally move on.
“Okay, goodbye then.”
“Goodbye.”
I called for him as he was about to walk out of the door. “Rain, I’m really sorry.”
He shrugged. “If that’s what you want, I respect that.”
I could only heave a huge sigh of relief as I watched the distance between us grow bigger and bigger.
Until I couldn’t see him anymore at all.
