Not this time miss

It takes time to mend one’s broken ego. Mine has been broken several times and consecutively that I’m getting good at handling it, scars and all.

The cause of my most recent egotistical wound is best displayed by the previous entry, The One That Didn’t Make It. Just as what its title suggests, the pain to which I am trying to recuperate from sprang from rejection.

To help me fully recover, allow me to rationalize over why my supposed 2nd shot at Youngblood vaporized to thin air by enumerating the top seven bitterness-free reasons why I did not make it.

1. DUH. My article begins with a book no decent Youngblood reader would read.

2. BLAME MY BOTTOM. My college professor kept on reminding us to proofread our works all the time. I should have paid more attention. Now I’m bound to blame my ass, or should I say “asses.” (See 1st paragraph, 2nd-to-the-last word)

3. ME, MY, I. You have to give me credit for using the second person point of view. Not a lot of writers dare to use “you” in their entire piece. However, it is obvious that my “you” is really “me.” Even if I’m no award-winning writer I am aware that unless you are writing an autobiography, you’re not supposed to write about your self all the time. My fault.

4. LAY OFF SARCASM. At a certain dose it is funny. Go beyond enough and then the world will hate you. I’ve expressed my idea of what is true in a style I take pleasure in but in the process I stepped on others’ truth. My apologies.

5. NO MOCKERY PLEASE. I hit below the belt when I challenged man’s ability to read—not a good move especially when the editor himself is a man.

6. MAKE UP YOUR MIND. I switched from defending the case of those with no boyfriend since birth to that of the spinsters then back to those who are single since birth. I still believe that society see them in one plane but I should have clarified that I am defending all of them with equal intensity.

7. KEEP IT PRIVATE. I should keep my self-deprecating ways to myself, or at least to my closest allies. My first time readers would think I am altogether pathetic and will more likely dismiss my future articles as just another blob of rants. I strongly suggest that they shouldn’t. Even after this piece they shouldn’t.

OK, I’ll stop here.

The One That Didn't Make It

In the Absence of a Man

Originally written on 28 Jan 2005

The title of a new book hits you on the head one day: No Boyfriend Since Birth. Upon recovering your senses, you realize that you have had no boyfriend since birth. You cannot help but think, “Is that good or bad?” That is when you begin to asses things.

At the age of 24, the evolution of the question, “Do you have a boyfriend?” becomes clear to you. If in your younger years such question implies “You better say no; you’re just a kid!” the same interrogative sentence would now mean, “you better have a boyfriend or else you would be an old maid!” From there you deduce two “facts” forced by society: (1) young girls with boyfriends are plain sluts and (2) mature women with no boyfriends are pure losers. Harsh indeed but there is more.

Your friends begin to worry for you—you know, you being 24 with no boyfriend—your whole life. They try pairing you up with guys they know and even with guys they do not know. It does not stop there. They give you Friendster testimonials that practically sell you to every guy who is capable of reading. Little do they know that not a lot of guys are capable of reading, hence your friends are selling you to a minute percent of the male population. Not a very good marketing strategy, you might say.

Soon your mother enters the world of your theoretical love life—okay, let us not go there. Shift to another scenario.

While having dinner with your officemate, in the middle of your serious small talk, she asks you, “How do you see yourself in the future? At what age do you plan to get married?” You panic and nearly choke to death. You have not gotten yourself a boyfriend and she is asking you your wedding deadline. In the hopes of concealing shock from her unexpected question, you explain that boyfriends are not yet part of your master plan and so is a wedding. She stares at you like you were an unpretty freak and convinces you that sooner or later, you have to groom yourself as a wife or else you would grow old alone.

A skirmish ensues inside you. Should you tell the someday-bride-to-be how you really feel? You decide to restrain yourself from bursting your officemate’s happily-ever-after bubble. You keep quiet and let things be—for a while, at least. A few minutes later, you lay down your side. You admit that you have intimacy problems—that you are allergic to anything mushy and everything related to Cupid. You follow it up with a statement that declares your lack of faith in relationships. You clarify that, although you are aware that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship, you can’t seem to reconcile the thought of taking a vow which does not take something as extreme as “death” to part. You end up looking more pathetic in the eyes of your officemate. At this point you decide not to further your case or else you might plummet to being “the pus that infects the mucus that curds up the fungus that feeds on the pond scum.”

You settle with “some of us are not meant to get married” for your argument’s conclusion. And in your head you add, “women like you who look forward to wearing a white gown and trekking a flower-filled aisle should be thankful that some women, like me, are not too psyched with getting hitched, otherwise decent men would be doubly scarce.”

Speaking of men, a member of the collective word comes up to you one day and asks you on a date camouflaged as an invitation to hang out at the mall. Sure he is an eye candy, but you decline from his offer. Although you admire his gut for proposing a date, you do not appreciate how he did it prematurely. Your one-week encounter with him had been limited to seeing him—literally just seeing he exists. You are seconds away from asking him, “didn’t your mother ever tell you not to go out with strangers?”

Probably to mend his broken ego he—in his most obnoxious way—assumes you are a lesbian and becomes vocal about it. Yes, you once thought that you were such but your identity crisis is now over. No entity, no matter how lovely it is, can ever convert you to gayness—no offense to the gays out there.

Soon, you wonder what the big deal is with women not wanting to get involved. Why a woman who refuses to be at the side of a man should be called an “old maid” or a “spinster”—both terms connoting “tarrying”—whereas a man who stays unmarried is called a “bachelor”—a word which seems to project “coolness.” You hate the extent of society’s baseless double standards but what can you do? Even if you spend your lifetime educating people that not all unattached/unmarried women are ugly and stinky, or reeking with wicked personalities, or lesbians or losers; your propaganda will not be enough to persuade people that, sometimes, being a single woman is amazing—maybe even more remarkable than being somebody else’s girlfriend or wife.

Never in your personal politics did you wish to convert women to single-blessedness. All you want is for people to stop feeling sorry for you for not having a guy of your own; to cease pairing you up with anyone or anything male and single; and to start respecting the fact that you are truly, genuinely happy despite the absence of a man in your life.

You reach out for the book which caused you a few minutes to contemplate on your life in the absence of a man. You figured, yes, things may change between you and the males of the species but it definitely does not change the fact that being single since birth is not at all bad.

**Tyrene is pushing 25 this year and still remains single. She insists that as long as she can carry her own things and bring herself to and from various places, she will not be needing any guy—well, romantically speaking, at least.

Posted on 01 July 2005 at 04:32 AM in Public thought balloon | Permalink

Allow me to Rant

**Prof. Randy David discusses the President's speech the other night in a show at ANC. After he wrapped up his piece and left, Ces Drilon delivers a disclaimer--that the network didn't have anything to do with what the professor has just said.

Prof. Randy David said it all too well—that is, the implications of GMA’s public apology.

Then the news anchor wimps out and raises a disclaimer, saying that ANC had nothing to do with what the professor had just said. Excuse me, Ms. Ces Drilon. What have you been doing all these years? And I thought time spent in media would have made an amazona out of you—well at least that aside from being a fashionista (which I highly disagree you deserve to be called). May I inform you that while you where putting on your eye shadow and shimmering lipstick, Prof. Randy David was talking about the Filipinos being smart. Even if politicians think they can fool the Filipino people, we can’t be fooled because we know how to think. That includes processing “who said what” which really requires minimum thinking.

Ms. Drilon, you need not make clear that the opinions we heard from Prof. Randy David were his. For one thing, being a pawn of media, you are not allowed to bare you personal biases especially given your type of show. Also, even with your make up and funky wardrobe on, I don’t think you would have come up with insights as precise and as properly worded as his. Besides if you do that to all your guests I doubt that anyone would like to appear on your show ever again.

You are a shame to your kind. Quit kissing the Lopez ass. You ought to buy yourself some balls or find a new career.

Coexisting with Rats

I am living in a house that is probably as old as I am. And if you are a 25-year-old house, the shelter you provide would not be limited to a pack of thinking, featherless bipeds but it would also extend to insects and rats. As much as it is shameful to admit that a sanitary freak such as myself is living in a houseful of creepy crawlies, I would not hesitate to say it. At least by doing so, the world will have one less phony.

Yes, I have learned to coexist with rats and the likes—filthy creatures that spoil whatever it is that you own even after silently allowing them to live with you. You are left with no other choice but to recognize their presence and, in your original way, to adapt to their inevitable existence. Then again, coexisting with rats is probably what life is like—at least in this land.

You wake up in the morning assured that the price of gas will go up—it is abnormal if it does not. You ride the jeepney on your way to work and you shell out extra pesos for the newly approved fare hike. You say a little prayer for the blessed soul of the Cardinal who is just died. After eating dinner, you see the President of the country say “I’m sooooo sorry” on TV.

Now, the latter is not something that happens every day. Seeing the haggard-looking president deliver her public apology on national television causes a twinge of pity to some of us, although not enough mercy to stop us from using our mental faculties and continuing to discern the right from the wrong. Since when did a bland smile automatically deserve pardon? After hearing an empty speech, we, thinking Filipinos, cannot pretend nothing happened.

It is no longer a media fest that is out there. It is a mockery of a nation that is barely hanging on. While some of our country’s citizens work their bottoms off to create a decent image of our 1,107 islands, those whom we look up to discretely farts in public and we all have to suffer from the stench they emit.

It is not just PGMA. We have had our share of leaders known for their intelligence who end up sucking our resources for their personal and their families’ gain. Furthermore they and their families are still there, sucking what-is-left-to-suck. We have voted for rich leaders hoping that they, being used to wealth, would stay civilized and take their hands off our national treasury; however during and after their office they come out ten times richer, maybe more. We have elected a poor son of a Doña because we thought that he, being the poor man he claims to be, would understand majority of us. Yet somewhere along an almost sober path he fails us. We can go on enlisting the types of leaders we have had and we would wind up frustrated.

Have we run out of good people in this nation? There are 46 million Filipinos and no decent one can protect our country’s interest.

It is the most terrifying thing in the world to lose a good supply of trustworthy rulers.

Have we all turned into rats? (ending is not yet final)

The What If’s

They say that we regret the risks we do not take. However, in making decisions, you are always faced with two risks: the one you take and the one where you turn your back to. And then there are the branches of those risks. Whether you do something or not, you take a risk. Whether you say “yes” to one question or “no,” you’d still be taking risks.

It is therefore safe to conclude, that for every decision we make, we’ll always have something to regret. Because in coming up with such decision, there is one risk we inevitably did not take.

I, then, tell you, try not to let those regrets to run your lives. It’ll make making new regrets fun-ner!

Glow in the Light

They arrived today. My uniforms: four glow-in-the-light green blouses with flower embroidery at the chest area, three pin-stripe pants with the so-called “baston” cut, and one collarless pin-stripe blazer. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. It’s either I overdid describing my new set of wardrobe for the coming months or I was too honest, too accurate in describing the human enrobing stuff I received today.

Then again I may just suck at writing fashion. I am not even sure if it’s “pin-stripe” or “pin-stripped” or “pin stripe.” (It has come to my attention that it is supposed to be “pinstripe.”)

Uniforms. Uniforms are remnants of the more powerful, not to mention idealistic, fraction of society’s attempt to implement communism. A utopic society wherein no groups exist. A perfect classless society as a genuine Marxist would put it. Wearing uniforms would promote equality. No rich; no poor. We all exist in on flat plane. Peace brother!

But do uniforms do this? Do they effectively strip us off of our places in the social ladder?

I haven’t worn uniforms since high school. That’s a long seven years ago. I didn’t complain before. I went to school and I wore my uniforms. And then UP happened.

I don’t think I’d be comfortable with uniforms. The ones I am bound to wear soon don’t have any lining and so their seams are bound to rub against my skin for I-don't-know-how-long. And me not being comfortable in any type of clothing is a BIG problem. I don't really care much if I'd end up looking like a teacher even if I'm not. I can let "looking ten years older" pass. The thing is, I couldn't stand itch for an hour, let alone a day.

But I am part of the lesser powerful fraction of society so I am required to conform. Stitch my lips so I won't be able to whine!

I'm ranting; I have to end this.

I am now supposed to say, wearing a uniform and being one of the crowd poses the challenge to standout. And if I may use my new uniform as a metaphor, I'd add, my new blouse can glow in a sea of brightness; and if it can do that, why can't I? Time to shine. Time to shine!

For the one out there listening to my pleas, I was longing to shine not to glow. There is a vast difference. Don't mock me.

COMMENT

err. hate na hate ko talaga yang blouse na an. the pants i can live with but the blouse is just hideous. yeaaargggh. maybe when i finally wear the self-incriminating uniform i will also wear a bathrobe over it to hide, you know, the, err, uhm , hideousness.
Posted by: GinGmaGanda | July 10, 2005 09:02 AM

About Me 3

I am already twenty five; I have to take this “About Me” seriously.

I’m opposites fused into one. My name, for example, is somewhat an oxymoron. “Ty” stands for “tyranny” which means “dominance through threat of punishment and violence.” Meanwhile, “-rene” (from “Irene”) in Greek means “peace.”

I’m a Gemini. I blame Castor and Pollux for my multiple personality. Talking to myself keeps me sane even if I do that activity aloud. And I laugh at my own jokes too—aloud. I once took a Yin-Yang test. Apparently, my Yin rates equal to my Yang, thereby suggesting androgyny.

I’m a fan of Jessica Zafra’s cynicism but I am a sucker for Robin William’s “inspirational” movies. I have never cried while watching a movie except probably for that single tear that rolled when I saw “Mrs. Doubtfire”—and it was supposed to be a comedy.

I love kids but I refuse to have any (at least as of the moment). I hate drawing attention to myself but I feel the need to shine. I don’t understand people in general but I like being AROUND them—although not necessarily being WITH them. I am not fond of men but I love Jude Law.

I am not simple, I am not nice. But I ultimately want to do the good thing for as long as I can. I look serious but I can be really hilarious. I love writing but am not necessarily a fan of reading.

I say that I am a private person and am not used to disclosing things about me but here I am saying these things to who-knows-who.