Rendezvous
“Scoot over, [Mistress]. I’m feeling sleepy.”
I scooted over to the side, my breasts practically flattened to the wall, as another classmate squeezed in his huge frame between myself and TheIdealMan in the miniscule bed. “Oh, guys, come on,” I muttered, “I can’t breathe in here!”
My classmates laughed. Another day at the PGI Quarters. A full-blown whole-day citywide brown-out and a 5:00 PM class with Dr. Lee at Radiology has resulted into my hanging out at the PGI Quarters at noon. I wasn’t really much of a siesta person so I figured, since the hospital has a generator and all, it would probably be a cooler place for killing time than sweating like a pig and dying of boredom at home. Of course, I had forgotten that lunchtime was usually the time of the day when the PGI Quarters was most packed.
Cocolee, official class clown-slash-heartthrob was in the middle of telling an anecdote about a former Psychiatry patient he met during his rotation at IM when my cellphone rang.
“Hello?”
Yup… It was Mcplayer.
“Meet me at the Doctor’s Quarters. The one near the Burn Ward?”
I smiled. “What time?”
“Now.”
I laughed. “Okay.”
A quick tug-of-war between my hair and the hairbrush, a few strokes with the lipstick and a couple spritz of my perfume and I was all-set. I was about to walk inconspicuously out the door when Eve called me. We were both under Dr. Lee’s class but she usually comes in early because of – get this! – her insatiable appetite to learn… Yes, I too believe she must be suffering from some kind of a disease… “Hey, [Mistress], where are you going?”
Think, [Mistress], think. “Uhmmm… lunch.”
“I’ll go with you. I haven’t had my lunch yet.”
“Uhmmm…” Shit! What the hell— “I’m having lunch with my Mom.”
Eve scrunched her face. “Oh, well. No thanks. I’ll just wait for Doc Badz instead.”
I simply nodded and headed towards the Burn Ward, a cat-ate-the-canary smile practically pasted on my face. There’s something incredibly naughty about keeping secrets. The mere fact that you’re keeping something from other people makes rendezvous-ing so much more… what’s the word?… Delicious?…
And there he was, waiting for me by the door of the Doctor’s Quarters.
From afar, I can just imagine that expression on his face, as he watched me walk towards him. Those intense eyes, boring through me, as if he was planning to eat me up in one unexpected moment. The lips partly pouting, partly smirking, as if he knew something about me that even I didn’t know… He was very dangerous grounds, I know, but somehow, sparks flew and I was hooked to him like Mighty Bond between the pads of your fingers.
Mcplayer smiled at me and tugged on my hand as I walked into the Doctor’s Quarters. “Hi, baby,” he greeted, kissing me lightly on the cheek.
I grinned. “Hey, have you had lunch yet?”
“Yes. You?”
I nodded. “So, how was your day?”
He started playing with my hair, twirling them in between his fingers. “Don’t ask,” he answered, rolling his eyes for emphasis. “It was quite toxic at the ward this morning. Thank God that’s all done now. At least, now I finally get to rest.” He then leaned his head on my lap and closed his eyes.
“Oh, poor you,” I teased and started playing with his hair.
He laughed. “Stop! You’ll mess up my hair.” He then grabbed my hands and held them firmly, his fingers fitting perfectly in between my own.
I swatted him playfuly. “So, aren’t you going to ask how my day is?”
He looked at me guiltily. “Oh, haven’t I asked you yet?”
I laughed and pretended to look mad. “Heh!”
He laughed and held me closer. “Uyyy… hahaha… You’re mad at me…I’m sorry, baby. I’m just so tired. Okay, so how was your day?”
“I found out Rockstar got his new girlfriend pregnant.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Rockstar, your ex?”
I nodded.
“With the same girlfriend who was the reason why you two broke up?”
I pretended to look offended. “Did you have to remind me?… Yeah, I guess so. I heard his parents are having a problem right now because they can’t exactly get married yet since the girl is only 16 years old.”
“What did you feel when you heard the news?”
“I don’t know. Mixed emotions. Mostly, I felt surprised.”
“Knowing Rockstar, were you actually even surprised?”
“No. I was just surprised that it actually happened. I kinda felt sorry for him because from what I heard, he’s still jobless until now and now he’s become one of the statistics that he used to vow he would never become – an unwed father.”
“Too bad for him… Baby, that’s karma.”
“Yeah. I guess… Actually, I felt sad as well. More for myself, not for him.”
“Why? Do you still miss him?”
I laughed. “No… Honestly, I think I felt sad because… how come he got his girlfriend pregnant and not me?”
He laughed. “Aba! And you mean you actually wanted him to get you pregnant?”
I giggled. “Hehehe…Just kidding.”
“You know, it’s quite easy to get anyone pregnant. What’s difficult is to raise children.”
“Yes, dad,” I teased, kissing him quickly on the lips. “I was just joking.”
“But if you really want a baby,” he turned and before I knew it, my back was practically reclining on the white standardized sheets of the hospital bed, “I am quite easy to talk to. You want us to start making one now?”
I laughed. “Heh! You’re so bad!”
“No, I’m just being a good friend. You know, I’m always ready to lend a helping hand… So, if you really want to get pregnant now, I’ll lend you my body. Free of charge.”
I smiled. “You’re crazy!” I told him, before giving him a quick smack.
He then looked at me inquisitively. “Honestly speaking, I am not going to get mad. Do you think you’re completely over him?”
I looked at him and found myself surprised by what I saw in his eyes. It was fear, fear that he was actually going to lose me… Ha! I guess he has realized it so much earlier than I did… What started out as friendship, a fling, a relationship that was just supposed to test the waters has finally turned out to be so much more. Damn hell… how was it that I never realized it until now? Or maybe I was just so much in denial about it, afraid of getting hurt again, that I didn’t want to face what’s right there infront of me?… Until now…
Oh, shit. What the hell am I gonna do?
“I’m over him.”
“How sure are you?”
I looked at him. “I just do.”
He kissed the back of my hand and didn’t say another word.
“Baby?” I called.
“Yeah?”
“Wanna know something?”
“What?”
“I’m just as scared about this as you are.”
He turned to me, smiled and kissed my forehead. He understood. Words weren’t needed because he felt it too. And it was clearly enough for now.
Disappointing My Mother
Out of all the members in my family, I have always had the most lax schedule. Before starting medical school, I was volunteering at some hospital every afternoon, together with my boyfriend Rockstar. Both of my parents were working and my siblings had classes from morning till afternoon. As such I was usually the one tasked to go out and deposit money to the bank, pay the phone bills, electric bills, water bills, cable bills and even my siblings’ tuition fees.
One morning, my mother asked me to go to her office later because she had an errand which she wanted me to do. This was a common occurrence since she sometimes leaves blank deposit slips in her office and I cannot go to the bank without her signature in the form. A few hours later, I was finally dropped off by Rockstar to my mother’s office.
“Hi, Ma.” I took her hand and raised it to my forehead as a sign of respect.
“Oh, you’re here. Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“[Mistress], are you pregnant?”
I was shocked. “Excuse me?”
“I found your diary last night. You left it in our room, wide open. So, I read your latest entry… [Mistress], how can you do this to us? Haven’t all the unwanted pregnancies from your cousins ever taught you something?”
I wanted the floor to just open and swallow me up. I slinked further down my seat. I’m so stupid. This was all my fault. My period has been late for a few weeks. I have an irregular cycle so this shouldn’t cause such an alarm. But because I have been sexually active with Rockstar much too often than I would have cared for, I too was afraid that the frequency might have increased the chances that I could be pregnant. So, I wrote about it in my diary, which was a standard-looking blue Corona notebook back then. Because I was still deliriously inlove with Rockstar back then, I wrote about how despite my own fears, I wouldn’t really mind if I was pregnant since I know he will take good care of me and he will be a great father to my baby. Now, since I would usually write in my notebook and then encode it afterwards and our PC was in my parent’s bedroom, she must have read my diary when I had totally forgotten that I had left it in their room, after taking up a phone call from Rockstar while I was in the middle of my encoding session.
“Ma, I’m irregular. I was just afraid that I could be pregnant,” I told her, in a really small voice. I was afraid of my Mom. Still am though.
“What about our plans for you? You have disappointed us so much. What kind of example are you setting to your siblings? I would have thought that you were the smartest one in the family. I did not expect this from you. How could you do this to us? We have always supported you in all your decisions! You know, when you said you don’t want to apply abroad anymore and you want to go into medical school instead, we supported you. Even when we don’t know where we would actually get money to sustain your education for the next few years. Do you even still want to continue pursuing medicine now?”
“Ma, I’m not pregnant. I still want to go into medical school.”
“But how will you focus if things between you and Rockstar are too serious? I know it was a wrong decision to allow you to have a boyfriend. You two are always spending your time together. It can be distracting for your studies.”
“Ma, I’ve had boyfriends in college before. I never let boys affect my education. Look, despite the fact that I had boyfriends before, I never neglected my grades and I still got to graduate in time, didn’t I?”
“But are you sexually active with Rockstar?”
I could have lied and told her no but she read my diary so she’d obviously know I wasn’t telling the truth. I could have come up with a lesser lie and tell her yes, and then tell her that we only did it one time. I could have thought of a thousand other better things to tell her than what actually came out of my mouth if I had more time but alas! Being the tactless person that I was, I blurted out the first thing that popped into my mind.
“Ma, I’ve been sexually active since I was 21 with my other boyfriends in the big city. I know what to do to make sure I don’t get pregnant.”
I cringed as soon as I heard the words come out of my mouth. I just basically told my Mom I haven’t been a virgin for a long time, that I’ve slept with more than one man, and that basically despite trying to raise me well, her daughter was a slut.
GAHHHHD…
It probably took all my mother’s willpower not to slap me in the face right then and there.
My mother then went on an extremely long tirade regarding my lack of moral values, my disregard for their feelings and the Christian values they taught us, their personal vendetta against Rockstar for taking advantage of me, veiled implications of their not wanting me to pursue medicine anymore, my cousins’ unwanted pregnancies (I have one cousin who got pregnant during her affair with a married man and two other female cousins in my mother’s sides who were forced into marriage because of unwanted pregnancies), my stupidity, my apathy and my loose morals. She did not yell but continued chastising me in a soft tone, as she told me of how she couldn’t sleep at all last night and how she would just stare off into space and think about how I have destroyed their dreams for me, and how she wouldn’t even notice that she was crying until her tears were literally dripping down her neck.
I hated that. I couldn’t stand that. I would have preferred it more if she yelled or slapped at my face instead. I could face her anger well. What I couldn’t bear to face was the guilt and her disappointment.
I couldn’t look at my mother’s face for quite some time. I was allowed to go out with friends, even until the wee hours of the night, but Rockstar and I were not allowed to go out anymore together during evenings (as if people cannot have sex during mornings or afternoons, hello?!). It took a few months for my mother to learn to trust me again. I had been marked for life and indiscretions like this were one of those things that my mother would be able to forgive, but never ever forget.
So now during evenings, I just tell my parents I’m going out with friends even when I’m actually going out with a boyfriend.
Yeah, I know, I know. I can be such a bad daughter sometimes.
Catholic School Girl Guilt
I occasionally think that maybe I have a destructive personality.
I frequently lament on not having a boyfriend and getting worried that maybe someday I will end up dying alone, but when I do end up in a relationship, I somehow end up mucking things up until it just doesn’t seem to work out for anyone of us that the relationship just has to end.
And the cycle repeats itself.
I say this because I have noted one particular attitude of mine that has most likely brought about the start of the impending destruction in most of the relationships I have been in.
I call it, the Catholic School Girl Guilt.
You know that Golden Rule for Cheating Boys that goes something like, “If you’re ever caught cheating, at all costs, never ever admit to the truth”?
Well, I do the exact opposite.
Even if they have no idea that I had done something wrong, I feel so incredibly guilty that I end up confessing to my boyfriend about it. It probably had something to do with the guilt that has been ingrained far up my cerebrum from my Catholic School upbringing when occasionally, even if you haven’t really done anything wrong, your teachers make you feel like you did. You become unable to look them in the eye and your conscience really eats at you that you eventually end up confessing to a deed which, most of the times, you didn’t even do in the first place.
Case point my freshman year in medical school. I had been seeing Rockstar for more than six months already. I had just started medical school and was starting to make new friends. I loved my new classmates and I was missing my old college buddies terribly. Hence, I wanted the opportunity to get to know my new classmates more. A bunch of the guys were always inviting me out for drinks and night-outs. I always kept telling Rockstar that I wanted to go with them. Rockstar, always feeling threatened by the presence of other guys spending more time with me, forbid me to.
This, of course, does not do well for me.
“No,” Rockstar remarked, for the umpteenth time.
“Come on. We’re always hanging out together. Can’t the two of us go out with them for once?”
He, of course, took this the wrong way. “Why? Are you bored with me?”
“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just that I want to get to know these people too. I would be going to spend the next five years with them after all. As for us, we’ve known each other for six months now and baby, we have a lifetime to get to know each other. Don’t I deserve the chance to be able to hang-out with these people as well?”
“Well, if you loved them so much more than me, then maybe you should break up with me to be with them.”
“You’re totally taking this the wrong way.”
“No, seriously, I mean it.”
“What? I’m being insecure? Is it so bad to be worried that my girlfriend wants to spend time with other guys than her own boyfriend? They’re guys, [mistress]. I know what guys are interested in when they ask out girls their own age. You can’t understand me because you’re a girl and you don’t know these things.”
Rockstar had no concept of a platonic relationship with the opposite sex. His closest female friends have all been either girls he used to court in the past, he used to have a thing with, used to have a thing for him or are just too unattractive to even have a thing with at all. I pouted. “You’re being irrational.”
“Now, I’m irrational? They like you! Is it actually wrong for me to feel threatened that some other guys are interested in you and you actually want to get to know them?”
“They are NOT all attracted to me.”
“Not all? So you mean to say, there are some who actually are.”
This is the point when I should have just kept my mouth shut. But the Catholic School Girl guilt slipped in before I could even stop myself. I was just so pissed off with him that I didn’t even think first before talking my mouth off. “Well, there are a few who seem a little too friendly.”
“WHAT?” If Rockstar was a cartoon character, it would be safe to say that there would be steam coming out of his ears at this point.
But, oh, I had already opened the floodgates and I must have been incredibly stupid that I proceeded to further incriminate myself. “You know, just a little too flirty that maybe misconstrued as a sign of interest. But it’s nothing. They’re probably just being friendly or something.”
“Who?” Rockstar asked me, his expression hard as stone.
“Rockstar!”
“If you’re not going to tell me, I swear I’m going to leave you and walk out of here right now!”
“Seriously, [mistress]!”
“Okay, okay… I think FunnyBoy has a thing for me.”
Before I knew it, he begins this major phone brigade wherein he calls my bestfriend from highschool, EngineerBoy, asks him about FunnyBoy which of course, EngineerBoy does not have any idea about, asks for the number of his girlfriend Darna, who is also one of my classmates in medical school, calls her up and asks her about FunnyBoy as well which she fervently denies, asks her for FunnyBoy’s number, calls him and asks him the most embarrassing question as to whether it is true that FunnyBoy is interested in me.
The whole thing happens with me fuming and pleading him not to proceed with all this embarrassment.
“Rockstar, come on! This is embarrassing to me and to FunnyBoy! For all we know, I’m just imagining things and he’s really just being friendly. What if he’ll start thinking that I’m one of those conceited girls who think every man in the room is in love with her?”
“Stop it! I’m done talking to you!” And he proceeds to talk to FunnyBoy on the phone. FunnyBoy, of course, denies being interested in me and their conversation ends with Rockstar telling him to stop flirting with me because I already have a boyfriend. Somewhat appeased, Rockstar finally relents and drops the argument with me.
Of course, at this point, I was already incredibly humiliated that for the next few weeks, I avoided FunnyBoy as much as I could and just simply couldn’t look him in the eye.
Me and my big mouth.
Why God Forbid Perfection
I was hanging out with TheRock, EngineerBoy, and Darna, EngineerBoy’s girlfriend and one of my classmates from medical school, at this nice little café for some drinks and coffee (for TheRock who didn’t drink alcohol).
“So, [mistress], how come you and TheRock never hooked up?” Darna asked me.
TheRock and I laughed, me, slightly with discomfort.
“Yeah,” EngineerBoy chimed in. “I mean, you’re bestfriends, you always hang out with each other, you’re both open-minded. Imagine if you two were a couple, and the four of us would be double-dating all the time. Wouldn’t that be just sweet?”
“Yeah, I mean, seriously, TheRock, weren’t you ever interested in [mistress]?”
“She’s a girl, you’re a boy. She’s nice, you’re nice. She’s smart, you’re smart. She’s good-looking, you’re very rich,” EngineerBoy joked and we all laughed at his attempt to make fun of TheRock’s looks. TheRock was not that easily offended thankfully.
He just grinned and said one of the most profound things I have ever heard him say in his entire life, “You know, God does not allow perfection.”
We all laughed.
“If [mistress] and I fell inlove with each other and became a couple, it would have been perfect. We would have been so good for each other that it would be the perfect kind of relationship. But we wouldn’t be fighting with each other at all and it would be so boring, so God said, this is too perfect, I wouldn’t allow this. Thus, he made sure that perfection should be forbidden and thus, he gave [mistress] the most un-perfect boyfriend in the form of Rockstar, whom she constantly keeps fighting with. Hence, the reason why [mistress] and I never hooked up.”
Of course, TheRock was simply making an attempt to make light of our situation.
But still, somehow, as crazy as it sounded, it did make sense.
The Man Who Broke Me
I once had that someone and his name was DevilIncarnate.
Okay, kidding.
I call him Rockstar.
Rockstar was 23 years old, a year older than I was when we first met. He wasn’t that tall but he was well-built, a very talented guitar player who was the youngest in his family. We met at a rehabilitation center where we both volunteering. He wasn’t flirty at first, probably because I still had a boyfriend, albeit long-distance, when we first met. But when I announced that I had finally broken up with that boyfriend, Rockstar usurped on the first good opportunity that he saw. I needed help purchasing a certain DVD for my friend’s bachelorette party and he offered to accompany me. So he picked me up at home and together, we flogged down our embarassment (okay, we were trying to get some porn for the party) and was able to get ourselves some Class A hard-core porn through some local travelling salesmen who sell pirated DVDs. We started texting each other after that, talking more on the phone and before the month ended, he and I were a couple.
It was really fun at first. Despite him being wise in the ways of casual dating, I was his first serious girlfriend so I trained him on the ways of a true boyfriend-girlfriend relationship – the holding hands, the proper positioning of the body when sitting together, the naughty play of words, the expected and unexpected kisses. He was a quick study and soon he was showing me romantic places to dine in, inviting me to lunch with his family, showering me with flowers just because, hanging out at his house after my class, bringing me food at every opportunity. He loved me and never tired of telling me that he was incredibly lucky to have me. He made feel so adored with such fervor that at times I felt that he was choking me with his affection. I found myself wanting to break free, unable to cope up with his expectations, disappointing him so many times for simply being who I am until I started to lose sight of who I am and became forcibly molded into who he thinks I should be.
And oh, how I rebelled.
I started telling male friends whom I just recently met that I was single. I started sneaking out to meet my friends from school without telling him. I started to learn how to drink, to smoke again, to do the things I knew I wanted to experience while was still in my youth. Almost everything he had forbidden me to do, I did. He hated my friends so I snuck out to meet with them. He was jealous of my male bestfriends from highschool and forbid me to stay in touch with them, so I continued texting with them behind his back. But at the end of the day, after a thousand angry text messages and fights over the phone, I feel overcome by guilt and remember that he loved me so much. So I ended up with my tail between my legs, confessing everything to him and vowing never to do it again.
Until the next opportunity came and I once again succumb to it.
If I might have come across as a bad girlfriend, you’re wrong. I swear that I wasn’t. I really did my best to be the person he wanted me to be, to the point that I no longer had any close friends to talk to except for him. I was pulling myself away from my bestfriends and my family and I was so miserable that I tried to drown that mysery with the next closest thing: food. I gained so much weight that I eventually lost my self-confidence, started believing that he is the only person who will ever love me now, began missing a lot of the things that were happening around me, yearning for the opportunity to be who I really am, became desperate for more attention and spiraled more into depression.
And we fought a lot.
I tried to be that woman, but I failed miserably.
He must have been miserable too because he cheated, not once, not twice, but thrice if my memory was right. Our first month together, he slept with a hooker. I forgave him, thinking, I can’t really blame him since he wasn’t getting any from me then. A few months later, he started courting some girl who worked in the same hospital that we were both volunteering in. The girl turned him down so that didn’t progress the way he would have wanted to. His frequent excuse was that I made him so mad because of the things that I did despite him forbidding me that it forces him to cheat with other women just to get back at me. He made me feel like it was my fault, so once again, I forgave him. I can’t remember the rest of the girls he cheated with, except for one, which I will talk about much later in this post.
In my heart, I knew my parents will never agree to my marrying at such an early age, especially when I wasn’t even halfway to finishing medical school. I knew them well enough to know that there is no chance in hell that they will actually say yes. In my heart, I secretly hoped that they wouldn’t agree to it. It was my way out of the engagement. I was a coward, yes, but I needed them to tell him so I didn’t have to be the one who will hurt his feelings.
My parents certainly did not disappoint.
The summer wedding was cancelled. And I was free. For the meantime.
Until he told me about the younger girl he had been seeing, a minor, whom he had been sleeping with behind my back for the past two months.
It was the last straw that finally broke me.
The thing is, if you betray me as a boyfriend, I can understand that, because I might have pushed you to do so being the not so perfect girlfriend. But if you betray me as a friend, then I can’t forgive you. The past two weeks after we broke up, he continued flirting with me, messing my mind up that I didn’t even give myself the chance to mourn for the 2 ½ years that we have been together and had now lost. He made me believe that there was still a chance that we might get back together soon. I agreed to be friends with him even if I didn’t really think it was healthy for both of us. I never asked him for anything except for the promise that we would tell each other once we started seeing other people, so that the other person can move on.
He betrayed that trust, in so many ways imaginable, and I hated him so much.
I barraged him with e-mails of hate and desperation. I even barraged the other girl’s Friendster with scornful messages. Rockstar always brought out the worst in me, and he was still doing it, even after we had broken up. He begins threatening me that he’ll sue me for the hateful e-mails. I didn’t care. I wanted them to feel as miserable as I did. I didn’t want to be the only one feeling the pain.
I wanted to bring them down with me.
It took me two weeks before I stopped crying in my bedroom and burying my sobs among the pillows. It took several months before I could say that I was finally okay. Longer still for me to want to go into another serious relationship again. Rockstar and I never crossed paths again, at least, not face to face, although there were times when I saw him around town. He has a 3-year-old child now with the same girl, but they never married and he was still jobless apparently.
When it comes to my views regarding love, I was never the same person after that. I had become jaded, a little hardened, wiser (if I say so myself) but so much stronger.
I don’t regret ever having met him. I would like to think, if not him, I was bound to meet someone like him in my life anyway. I do hope that he had forgiven me, for I have long forgiven him. For now, I simply choke it all up to experience, just a part of what made me who I am now.
