A Chat with Her

HER. So you said you liked me.
ME. Duh! Don’t tell me you never noticed. Silly girl.
HER. Fine. I did. But why?
ME. Why not? I still have a dick and I'm capable of being attracted to women.
HER. And?
ME. And what? I like you. I had a rather big crush on you back then.
HER. Crush?
ME. Yes, something like that.
HER. Ha! This is interesting. Can I fish for compliments?
ME. I enjoyed being with you. But not anymore because you had left me behind.
HER. Whatever.
ME. Besides, why are you asking me these questions?
HER. So it was my company more than anything else? Just being curious George...
ME. Not just the company: the you, if you know what I mean. That’s why I enjoyed my twenty-third birthday so much. You means: beautiful, lovely woman (physically). Hazel eyes. Seductively silky voice. Carefree spirit. Genuinely kind heart. Someone who doesn’t care what other people think. Lives her own life, free, but grounded by values of family, and faith in God. (I couldn’t believe in God but I can be attracted to people who do.) And you never looked down on other people. That was something I found so wonderful about you. You were so much less pessimistic than I was.
HER. I think I have a tear in my eye.
ME. I mean every word. Lying would've taken so much longer.
HER. Now, please correct my grammar, okay?
ME. Okay. I can be your editor, if not anything else.
HER. Now that we’re both with someone else, do you somehow feel more connected to me? Closer?
ME. No. Are you disappointed?
HER. No.
ME. Do know that I won’t judge you. I’ll never do that. I love you very much as a friend and I am proud of our connection.
HER. Oh Migs, I am so in love with him.
ME. Please get out of here with that romantic crap!
HER. Piss off! Let me be. I’m shining!
ME. Well, so am I. And don't worry. I’m very much a romantic myself. I just consciously repress it, for it gets in the way of my writing craft. Ha!
HER. Sheesh! Man, that just stinks up your fart. Never repress!
ME. By the way, I really am serious about going to where you are. But I should have somewhere to stay. Your place? I won’t rape anyone, I promise.
HER. You can’t. They’re not as fortunate here, if you know what I mean. Besides, that would be against house rules.
ME. I was kidding, silly.
HER. Oh.
ME. I know where to stay, but I don’t want to spend the night by myself. Maybe you and F can join me for a slumber party, or a threesome, whichever you prefer.
HER. Maybe. And, by all means, rape me; I’m just not sure if you’d be able to handle that.
ME. Rape you? God, never in my lifetime did I ever think I'd hear that from someone I had a crush on.

Pollination

In front of us was a Green Label which did not necessarily promote sustainability. It did inspire, in increasingly intoxicating and soda-mixed stages, a discussion of socio-biological theory, as exampled by a butterfly story that my cousin Johnny –how apt, given what we were drinking, he’s from Los Angeles, here on lawyerly business– began telling.

“How can a butterfly,” he was saying, “who has escaped his cocoon and begun to fly, how can a butterfly like that make a caterpillar see what he has seen? The caterpillar has experienced nothing but a creaky floorboard.”

Johnny is forty-three years old, going on “forty-something”. He reads the Zohar. He called me in that Monday night for sashimi and drinks in his nineteenth-floor room at Linden Suites. A single candle had been lit, thus allowing the balmy aroma of eucalyptus oil guide our senses to proper judgment. It was a lovely night, conducive to conversation (if not religious conversion), and the view from his window offered a glimpse of the quiet, solemnly-lit Ortigas skyline. Looking over a whole urban district made me feel rather wise.

“Besides,” my cousin continued, pouring himself more whiskey, “even if they had made a pre-cocoon pact to report their lives to each other, the butterfly’s world would be beyond the comprehension of the caterpillar. He won’t understand it, not yet, not until he himself has broken out of his own enclosure.”

“But the butterfly can’t just forget about where he came from,” I interrupted. “Doesn’t he have the duty to keep in touch with the caterpillar?”

“Pollination,” Johnny said. “His duty now is to convey pollen to the stigma of a flower.” Then he drank from his cup and smacked his lips.

I noticed that the tiny chunks of ice on the raw tuna had melted away, and that the wasabi had blended with the Kikkoman to make a thick, unattractive and excremental sort of sauce. Then, looking at Johnny, who was wearing a crumpled black Gildan shirt and looking like the lost son of Mister Mathis himself, I thought of how he was able to handle being the eldest in our generation, the very contradictory essence of that, and then the inconvenient distance between America and the Philippines, where the Ascaño family –his, ours– beckoned him to come back, or at least pay visits more regularly.

“Oh. Do you still write?” Johnny asked.

“Yes,” I said. “But only if the world is interesting enough.”

It was almost six in the morning when we finally retired: he, to the bedroom, and I, to the luxuriously upholstered sofa by the window. The candle had long since been dead. The new morning cast a slightly beautiful light, and the rise of the sun was begging to be watched. But I hadn’t yet slept.

Not Quite Our Love Burger

No, please don’t eat my Sausage McMuffin when I’ve undressed your Sausage McMuffin with Egg. Between the two there’s an important difference which I wouldn’t want disregarded: the ten pesos that add up to a flat, round, and slippery Sunny Side Up. That’s ten pesos, with which I could have bought –well, I don’t know– a blank CD? An antibiotic? A jeepney ride to Chinatown ?

Not that I will make a fuss over such irritatingly happy sandwiches; their fibrous buns; their noisy paper wrap; the Styrofoam cups of stale coffee they come with. After all, we aren’t exactly notorious for breakfasting. It’s the concept of a greasy 8 a.m. meal at McDonald’s –had together– which we’ve come to appreciate, and which has motivated us to take the frightfully pleasant 7 a.m. walk from your house, then through a marshy row of mountainside shacks, then across the highway, and finally to the small commercial J.P. Rizal district where all the fast food restaurants and coffee shops are, and where, at 9 a.m., Uncle Ian is due to show up. (I don’t mean to imply that he’s always on time for meetings.)

As we wait for him you suddenly realise your mistake (“That was your McMuffin, wasn’t it?”), and I –in similar whoopsy-daisy fashion– realise mine: orange juice. I should have ordered orange juice. It’s a good source of vitamins, isn’t it, vitamins I need to boost my self-esteem or heal these face pimples away. Either would do, as they are very closely related; at the heart of the matter is my dermatological well-being, which has been adversely affected by this mild case of dehydration. Yes, I know. I should pay more attention to what I consume –as should you– and how much of it I do consume.

But let’s forgive ourselves today. Our half-troublesome, half-inconvenient symptoms aside, everything seems to be in order. The sky is blue and the sun is shining, and the clouds are of the cleanest cotton. It’s also kind and breezy outside. The pedestrians –including this rebellious boy by the glass window, him who’s wearing Ray-Bans and a brown “Don’t be Sofa King Stupid” t-shirt and who would otherwise look so absurd in a less temperate climate– all look like they’re filming a TV commercial for spring: splendid, warm, and hospitable. My penchant for romance dictates that I should write a description of the weather on this sheet of tissue, to be brought home and typed later, but I don’t have a pen. I don’t even have my orange juice.

A Filipino Jealousy

A dictionary definition of the word ‘jealousy’ is the “mental uneasiness from suspicion or fear of rivalry, unfaithfulness, etc., as in love or aims.” In the American Heritage Dictionary, jealousy means “close vigilance”; in Webster’s Revised Unabridged, it is an “earnest concern or solicitude.”

Tie all these together and what do you have? An oft-stereotyped behaviour in Filipino relationships.

I say it not because I believe it, but because I’ve heard of it, countless times, from university sociologists and from Westerners with brown-skinned girlfriends (or boyfriends). Apparently, Filipinos are very hot-blooded. “In no other country,” a Caucasian friend observed, “have I witnessed people going such great lengths to confirm their jealous suspicions – checking a lover’s cell phone on the sly, sifting through the other’s private E-mail.”

I’d be none the more patriotic for saying this, but I suppose there’s something in my friend’s observation which rings painfully true. Just read the papers. On the front page, players in the political arena are bringing each other down, and officials are matched against others in fierce power rivalries. In the showbiz and entertainment section, celebrity romances are sensationalised by introducing infidelity rumours: break up, make up, break up again. And stories from the metro beat writers often report a homicide in this barangay and that, carried out by an otherwise good-natured husband in a drunken fit of jealousy. Wives, too; one of the craziest headlines I’ve ever read was about a woman who castrated her philandering partner.

This is not to say that Filipinos are inherently murderous monogamists. It’s just that most of us like to, uh – well, express “earnest concern”. Hence, the publicity blitz on Ruffa Gutierrez’s divorce. And eunuchs. Whether suspicions are warranted or unfounded is beside the point. Jealousy has its case-by-case origins, but the question here is: does it have a locale? Is it a weakness of the Filipino character?

In a country that is predominantly Roman Catholic and with a soap opera culture that glamourises love forevermore, we have learned to find security in faith and loyalty – and fear the most minor departure from this norm. In the close-knit setting of family and Filipino domesticity we’ve nurtured a great anxiety over abandonment. And in a tradition where love may exist without jealousy but rarely the other way around, we live to love the best way –perhaps the only way– we know how.

So don’t be surprised if you happen to have a Pinoy or Pinay sweetheart who cares for you hotly, uneasily, vigilantly. Instead be kind and thankful. In the dictionary of the Filipino, jealousy is the most maligned form of flattery.