How Many Is Many
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.
Stop the Wedding!
“[Mistress], you’re late. Everybody’s in church for the rehearsal.”
I hurriedly dressed up in the simple black dress my mother handed me. As I put on the 3-inch sling backs on my well-manicured toes, she began ranting off a litany of things that she had to do for the day.
“I already told your sister that you’re on your way. Everybody’s waiting for you in church. I think the seamstress has a problem with your dress. But I think one of your bridesmaids has already talked to her. I think you should try to get in touch with her anyway. I still have to go to the printers because I need to have a few more invitations printed up since your groom had additional guests he had to invite at the last minute. And your father’s busy with the caterers so he can’t do it himself.”
Wait. What the F—. “Excuse me? Mom? What is this all about?”
My mother rolled her eyes at me. “Your wedding, iha. Please don’t joke with me right now. I am soo not in the mood.
I plopped down on the bed ungracefully. Did I just hear her right?
MY. WEDDING.
“My wedding? With whom?”
She looked at me exasperatingly. “Iha, this is not the time to dilly-dally. Now, chop-chop. Hurry. Everybody’s waiting for you.”
I felt like I was going through the motions as I rode the car that was bringing me to church for the rehearsal dinner. I vaguely remember hearing myself ask her again and again who I was getting married to but she took my lack of knowledge of the man I was getting married to as another one of my well-known cinematic ploys to joke and make fun of her.
“Can I take a look at the invitation, Mom?”
Maybe I can take a peep at this mystery man that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
“I don’t have a copy of it. We ran out of invitations, that’s why I have to go to the printers to have an additional batch reprinted in the first place.”
“Ma, who is this mystery groom? This isn’t a parental kind of thing, is it?”
She rolled her eyes at me again. “Oh, you! Why should I set you up with a parental? We’re not even Muslim. Stop playing these silly games with me, iha! I don’t have time to deal with this right now!”
God. I’m getting married tomorrow.
And to some stranger I don’t even know.
I tried desperately to search through my memory for my so-called groom. The most that I got was a medium-height well-built faceless guy in a black coat and tie. When my mother dropped me off at the church, I saw the line of men and women, mostly friends and relatives, waiting for my arrival. Several orange and purple flowered topiaries were lined in one side of the church. I cringed, hoping against hope that somebody will tell me that those are not for my wedding. SexyMama, one of my highschool classmates, approached me right away.
“[Mistress], there’s a problem with your dress. I’m so sorry. I’ve already talked to them and they said they can’t get you the dress you asked for to be ready by tomorrow. I know it’s my fault since I was the one who recommended you to them in the first place but they are willing though to have my old wedding dress resized to fit you and they’ll be able to deliver it to you as early as tomorrow morning.”
I just looked at her blankly. SexyMama was tall and extremely lanky. I, on the other hand, was petite and more curvy. It would take the best darn seamstress in the entire city to make me fit into her wedding gown. “I’m going to be wearing someone else’s wedding gown on my own wedding day?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Y-Yes…”
I have dreamed of my wedding my whole life and now, I’m going to be wearing someone else’s hand me down? “SexyMama, are you fuckin’ kidding me?”
“I am SO sorry. The dressmakers totally underestimated the time it will take them to get all the beads and embroidery sewn into the dress. I think they only got the embroideries today so they still had to saw up the whole thing and your actual wedding dress will not be finished by tomorrow.”
“Okay…” As if I had a choice. I sighed in exasperation. “Ahmmm, SexyMama?”
“Yes?”
“Who am I marrying tomorrow?”
SexyMama rolled her eyes at me. “Stop it, [mistress]. That’s not funny. The two of you have been dating for almost two years. Don’t tell me you’ve somehow conveniently forgotten who you’re marrying tomorrow!”
Seeing that I wasn’t going to get any dish from her, I grabbed my sister’s arm as she was about to walk past us. She was busy trying to set up the entrance of the bridal entourage.
“Hey, you’re here,” my sister, SisterJ, exclaimed. “Finally, we can start the rehearsal. Places, p—“
“SisterJ, who’s my groom?”
“Oh, don’t be coy, [mistress]. We’re all too busy to go along with your lousy pre-wedding humor.”
“What the— I have no idea who I’m marrying! Can’t you just get me a copy of the invitation so that I at least know the name of this guy I’m supposed to be spending my life with, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health?”
I was freaking out, obviously. But I didn’t care.
SisterJ slapped me on the cheek. “Stop it! Get your act together. This is all just pre-wedding jitters. Why don’t you just go there and stand at the end of the line and wait for your turn to march. We’ve been waiting for you for almost an hour! We’ll start with the rehearsals. Now!”
The sting from her slap was like a cold bucket of iced water spilled on my entire body. It calmed me, yes, enough so that I was able to go through the motions of walking towards the end of the bridal entourage and waiting for my turn to march. I vaguely remember saying thanks to the friends around me who congratulated me for my wedding tomorrow.
“You must be so excited!” exclaimed Darna.
“You’ve been waiting for this all your life!” Janedoe remarked giddily.
“Who would have thought you’ll actually get married before you turn 30?” Funnyboy interrupted. “We used to think you weren’t interested in marriage until you’ve finally saturated your desire for your single blessedness.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I heard myself say to them. Like a robot. I still had no idea who I was marrying. And then I thought, They are right. I have been waiting for this for almost my entire life. Even if I somehow gave them the impression that I was okay with the relatively short durations of my many past relationships because I was still enjoying being single, at the back of my mind, I secretly longed for the long-term relationships that most of my friends had. I worried that I might become a spinster for the rest of my life. I feared that I may not get the happily ever after I’ve been dreaming of.
And then I thought, What the hell?! What girl in her right mind marries someone she doesn’t know?
So in the middle of my wedding rehearsal march, I stopped and I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“Itigil ang kasal!” (Stop the wedding!)
And then I finally woke up. It was just a really bad dream after all. Thank God.
* Parental – A Muslim custom of fixing up the marriage of one’s child to another child of another family after an agreement between the parents of both families, which includes the settlement of a certain amount of money or dowry that will be exchanged from the family of the groom to that of the bride’s in exchange for the services rendered in rearing the bride.
Cooking 101 (Part One)
I can’t cook.
For the past 27 years of my life, I have never learned to cook.
Oh, I can fry an occasional fish, boil an egg, warm up a can of corned beef, cook rice in a rice cooker (which is basically following the 1:1 rule, no science in that), but I cannot make a complete fantastic meal to save my life. I can make a really fatty atherosceloris-beckoning breakfast though, composed of coking an egg sunny side up, warming up a can of corned beef, frying a couple of nitrite-laden hotdogs and toasting last’s night’s left over rice, if I really had no choice, but a year of that kind of cooking and I’d be the youngest contender for bypass surgery at the age of 28.
I’ve had several cooking mishaps, one which consisted of me attempting to make pancakes which resembled doughy scrambled eggs (which a few of my classmates have witnessed and never made me forget, referring to it as “The Unforgettable Day [Mistress] Tried To Make Hotcakes In the Community”) and another incident where I tried frying hotdogs, only to realize that I had actually forgotten to remove the hotdogs from their individual plastic wrappers and I had managed to make those plastic wrappers curl up as they burned in all that hot oil.
I blame it on the fact that I lived most of my life with a maid, who cooks all our meals for us. My mother, being a working mother for as long as I can remember (and will probably continue to do so, as long as the Philippine government will allow her) rarely cooks except occasionally, on the weekends that our maid has her days off. Actually, even on those days, my aunt, who has never married and lives with us, does most of the cooking so, I never really found the opportunity to ask my mother to teach me how to cook as she toils over a hot stove nor the drive to actually immerse myself in the kitchen.
But I’m really just making excuses. I’m lazy. That’s probably it.
But for the past few months, learning how to cook has provided me with a certain fascination equivalent to Fuck-Me-Boots* (black classy knee-length boots that I dream about but cannot find, afford, nor wear since I have calves disproportionate to my body from all that bicycling during my highschool days) and mountain-climbing (an activity I’d really want to take up but have found no friends willing to do that with me). I found myself checking out websites of other bloggers who cook, salivating over the pictures while wiping my own drool from my laptop and poring through cooking recipes in the Internet of foods that I will probably not be able to make from scratch.
Hence, I have resolved to mentally add this to my list of 101 reasons why I should move out of my parent’s house after I find myself a job: It will give me the opportunity to finally force myself to learn how to cook.
SoSexy, who has officially won the class’ vote for the Best Dinuguan (blood pudding) award, used to tell me that learning how to cook will make my then boyfriend fall for me more. As much as I loved my boyfriend then, I’m lazy guys, hasn’t anybody noticed that yet? So, it is only until recently that I actually started fantasizing about cooking up a romantic meal for some guy – after which, he would be so enthralled with my cooking that with a mouth full of Tequila Lime Chicken topped with Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Salad, he will go down on his knees and look up to me and say:
Whhhhmp mmm mmmpppprrrrhhhy mpphooo?
(Translation: Will you marry me?)
And I’d tell him yes.
Unless of course, I didn’t want him to. Then I’d just shove another spoonful of the Apricot and Walnut Vareniki dessert into his mouth instead and pretend that the wedding proposal never happened.
Am I Supposed To Want to Get Married Soon?
I had just come into the classroom and found the rest of my female classmates hunched over HotMama and her laptop as she perused over some girl’s pictures one by one which she had posted in her Friendster profile.
“Hey, who’s that?” I asked curiously as I took a peek at what has been keeping their interest.
“A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend,” HotMama answered.
SoSexy beamed when she saw me. “Hey, you should’ve been here earlier. We were looking through the girl’s wedding photos. They were amazing. You would’ve loved it.”
I heard the word “wedding” somewhere in the statement and I cringed. I cringed all the more when she said that I would’ve loved it. It was too early in the day to start ranting madly about marriage so I, of course, ignored what she said. I figured, it’s the girl thing. It is assumed that as a girl, I’d be mooning over wedding pictures since most women my age in general cannot wait to get married.
Just to make it clear, I am not in a hurry to get married. I will only consider marriage if I have invested at least one year in a relationship with a man who will continue making me laugh even when we’re both 80 and whom I am sure will never make me have any doubts at all that I settled for something less just because I was afraid of spending the rest of my life alone.
But of course, I didn’t tell her any of these – lest I look defensive – and I just smiled.
Anyway, a couple minutes later, HotMamasat infront of my desk as she started reading her book. She then looked at me. “So, when are YOU going to get married, [mistress]?”
I thought I had heard her wrong. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t seem to remember saying that I was getting married anytime soon. I haven’t even found the right person for the job.”
“What about your current boyfriend? Aren’t things serious between you and Philip? And by the way, when are you going to introduce him to us?”
“HotMama, I don’t see my relationship with him as the kind of relationship that will eventually lead to marriage. Hence, he’s not worthy enough to be introduced to my friends. Plus, even if he turns out to be a serious long-term kind of thing, I don’t exactly want to get married yet. At least not when I’m still in school.”
“Oh, come on. Seriously.”
“I’m serious, HotMama. I don’t want to get married yet.”
“But [mistress], you’re not getting any younger.”
Oooh… how sneaky of her to bring up the age card. I finished college in five years and delegated a year trying up pass my licensure exams, looking for a job and volunteering at a local hospital so basically, I was about two years older than most of my classmates. This also made me one of the oldest and unmarried females in the class.
Does this mean I’m supposed to just settle for anybody willing to marry me because I was nearing 30? I. DON’T. THINK. SO.
“HotMama, I kind of have a few things in my plate that I still want to do before I settle down, like move out of my parent’s house, buy a car, travel, that sort of thing. Whatever gave you the idea that I can’t wait to finally get hitched?”
At this point, she was looking at me like I was weird and I had grown horns at the top of my head or something. I decided to take the focus out of me instead by bringing up my other classmates. “If anybody’s excited to get married in here, it would be Darna and SteroidsGirl. They are the ones who’ve been seeing their boyfriends exclusively for like, almost forever.”
One of our other classmates, BabyG, must have heard our conversation and so, she decided to join us. “Speaking of getting married, SanBedaGirl is getting hitched this December.”
This made all the girls in class go, “Oh, wow!” It was obvious that none of us knew that oneof us in the class was actually getting married soon.
“I’m one of the bride’s maids,” BabyG added.
We started congratulating SanBedaGirl, who, as always, just smiled shyly and did not say any word. Everybody started becoming excited. It was, after all, going to be the first wedding of someone from our group. And in the middle of reviewing for the board exams, at that.
“So, I guess we’ll all be eating plenty this December,” Darna remarked.
“Yeah!” I exclaimed. I love food. So Sue me.
“No dieting in December, I suppose,” HotMama said. Some of the girls in class have been cutting back on their food intake since our currently sedentary lifestyle were apparently making them gain more pounds.
“Of course,” said BabyG.
And then another one of our classmates, FEUGirl, added her own two cents worth. “I’m so excited to get a taste of the wedding buffet … Oh, wait! Are we even invited?”
I laughed so hard I practically fell off my seat. She had a point. SanBedaGirlwas a bit aloof and did not come from the same school as a good majority of us did, hence, she only talked to a selected number of girls. Even when we’ve been talking about weddings infront of her face, she did not say a word at all about her upcoming wedding and neither did she actually invite us, even when we started congratulating her. We were all just so excited about her wedding that we automatically assumed that we were.
I slapped FEUGirl’s hand, “Nice one, FEUGirl!”
She laughed along with me.
Hanging Out With My Drunk Boyfriend at 2 o’ clock in the Morning
Coming home for a short weekend vacation from the community, I decided to go for a night-out with my highschool friends. Somewhere around past 1 AM, Mcplayer called me up and asked me where I was. As we were already about to call it a night, Mcplayer decided to meet up with me after he himself had attended a birthday party for one of the surgery consultants. Because we were all poor chaps with no cars (but apparently with money to go out for drinks), Mcplayer agreed to drop off my friends home first. Drunk to the point of no return, he regaled my friends and I with stories about how one time he was so drunk yet he was made the designated driver that he ended up smashing their car on the side of a truck. Despite his ability to drive in a relatively safe speed and still recognize the meaning of changing colors of the traffic lights, my friends and I began to fear for our life. As they sat at the backseat, a couple of them texted me.
Damn u, [mistress]. Dis car is a Death Trap.
If we die in dis Death Trap, our ghosts r sooo goin 2 haunt u evry nyt.
From the back seat, away from my boyfriend’s watchful eyes, my friends sign languaged choking my neck and I just smiled at them sheepishly in the hopes that they will forgive me should anything happen to us. Mcplayer, oblivious of what his revelations had stirred in us, continued chatting brazenly, unaware of my embarrassment and of how he was making a total ass of himself.
Afterwards, as we lay in bed together and tried to nurse his drunkenness and my own throbbing headache, we got to talking. Funny the things you find out when you’re with people who are inebriated to the point that they cannot help anymore what comes out of their mouth. Their loss of inhibition can be an eye opener. Mcplayer wasn’t really a funny guy but I was completely amused with the things spewing out of his mouth that night.
“I’m so drunk, [mistress].
“I know.”
“You know, I’ve wronged you so much, [mistress].”
I raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Remember when you texted me this afternoon? I couldn’t reply to you right away because I was actually with my girlfriend.”
I just nodded my head and shrugged nonchalantly. “I kind of assumed that already.”
“But you,” he looked me in the eye, almost sincerely. “You’re different. I like being with you more. You stimulate me mentally and physically.”
“Yeah, right,” I replied back, smirking sarcastically. I lit a cigarette and shared a drag with him.
“[Mistress], why are we doing this, [mistress]?”
I laughed.
“Hey, don’t laugh. Why are you laughing?… Do you love me, [mistress]?”
I started laughing even harder.
“I’m serious. [Mistress], do you love me?”
I smiled at him sweetly. “And who told you that I loved you?”
“I know you do. I don’t think you’ll still keep on seeing me even if you knew I have a girlfriend if you don’t really love me.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Let’s get married, [mistress]. When do you want to get married?”
“Year 2008. When I’m 28 and have already passed my Board Exams.”
“Okay. I’ll wait… I’m so drunk, [mistress]. Why don’t we just live together?”
I laughed even harder.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Anakan mo na lang ako, [mistress]. (Bear me a child, [mistress]).
I laugh aloud.
“I’m serious. I want to have a son with you, [mistress].”
“Go and ask your other girlfriend for a son.”
“But I want it with you. I want to see the fruit of our relationship.”
“But why me?” I asked him.
“Because I know you’ll take very good care of him.”
I took another drag from my cigarette and blew the smoke to the ceiling. “Let’s talk about that some other time. I am not yet ready for that.”
“Then, let’s get married, [mistress]. When do you want to get married? Next week? Next month? Next year? We’ll just have a civil wedding first.”
I smiled and took his face in my hands. “Look, baby, I am not yet ready to get marrried… Besides, why should I marry you? I’m very idealistic when it comes to marriage. If I was to get married, it’s going to be with someone whom I’m perfectly sure would be completely faithful to me.” I then punctuated the statement with a quick kiss on his lips.
“Okay… If you don’t want to marry me, then let’s still see each other even when you’re already married, okay?”
I started laughing again.
“Don’t laugh. Promise me we’ll still see each other even when you’re already married, okay?”
There was no way I’d allow that to happen but hey, if it rocks his socks off knowing that I would, then, by all means. “If you can find me, baby.”
“I’ll look for you.”
“Oh, really now?… God, you’re so drunk
