The Love Blog

Because I've been wanting to for quite a while now, because it makes me giggle a little, because it makes me teary-eyed a little, because I need to re-learn a few things I thought I had already learned, I‘m opening up my ex files. 


Understand two things though: first, that this is by no means complete because there are stories I cannot tell and that makes me very sad; second, that none of this is real because as a matter of fact, love is blind. It is even blinder when it sits beside me Sunday mornings for a cup of coffee and some conversation. I say to love, “Do you realize that you will live forever?” And because my conviction is as infectious as my sunshine, it gives me a thoughtful look and a quiet nod. 


I cannot tell everybody the circumstances in which we first met -- love and I -- because I do not want to give my uncles, male cousins and all my other substitute brothers a heart attack. Let’s just say that I held its hands with all my heart while world span beyond comprehension. White picket fences then were for the old to shelter their fears of being alone. I had no such concerns. I was never to be alone, never to fail, never to grow old and get ugly and all I had to do was say, “Candy” and love would trade me one for a smile.


Then I lost love because it was not meant to stay just yet. Youth is precisely for getting things mixed up so that ideally when you get a certain age (for example, 29) you can put mixed-up things back in the right order again because such is the job of grownups. Ideally, that is.


I found love again while roaming strange street corners, living at nights, downing unhealthy amounts of gin-po, and losing at games I couldn’t play. Love was with someone else then and although it shared my laughter, played my games and held my hands, it did not really want to be with me. Love had its own thing going and would later send me a very emotional text message which read, “Thanks a lot. You didn’t know me at all.” But what love did to me then was far worse: it did not at all see me.


And so I go on to Cebu for my first real job and for my first real boyfriend. Up until this day, it remains doubtless that we were happy in the most normal sense. Love decided to let me have it easy for a while. It was the time to give me my sunshine back, buy me candy while I was drinking, hold me by the elbows when I wobbled yet insisted that I was perfectly all right, get me extra rice when I was ashamed to ask, wait outside my door when I was angry and jealous, meet my friends when I felt like being a socialite, and listen to me sing even though I didn’t get the lyrics to his rock favorites right. I left promising to be back but love knew better than to believe that. I meant to be back though. I really really did.


Love must have taken this against me though, because the next time it appeared, it was on a motorcycle at an ungodly hour asking me if I wanted a ride. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. And let us leave it at that.


And nobody believes me when I say this but once in a while, love gets multiple personality disorder. I, in fact, have firsthand experience. One day, it came up to me and said, “Hi, my name is Fun.” And I said, “You are not Fun. You are Love.” And it said, “No, seriously I am Fun. If you want, I’ll prove it. I will cheat on you and then I will leave.” And so love, who believed himself to be fun (such a psycho), ran off with some other girl in Australia. It didn’t matter. I knew it was love because love always carries in its pocket a bunch of laughter that jingles a certain way. I recognize the sound every time.


What I learned though, after all this mad loving and disastrous breaking, is that it is not enough to find love. It is not enough to recognize it in its moments of ridiculous disguise. Some waiting may be necessary. 

Because entirely on its own, it has to come up to you looking all cocky and sure, and say, “I think you’re annoying, but for some reason, I can’t ditch you so we might as well stay together. And just so there is not a lot of hassle, I will try to be nice to you. And I suppose I'll take care of you because you're a little pathetic on your own.” And then of course you say, “You have some nerve. It’s not like you’re hot stuff. As a matter of fact, I think you are very mean. If it weren’t for my sunshine, you would be a very sad man with a very dark aura. But okay… since you beg.” 


With some luck, you might both find yourselves -- far far into the future -- on one of those quiet Sunday mornings sitting at the front porch staring at white picket fences. If you get this strange inexplicable feeling that something inside you will live forever, then maybe you’re good for life.

Because you know

You know you're bored, when late at night, you dance all by yourself to Ghetto Superstar, Getting Jiggy with it, Unbelievable and then after Macarena, sit back down panting and think, "Now what?"

You know you're a little sad, when having been tired of dancing, you decide that next best thing to do is to put together a playlist, which you will artfully entitle, Sorrow.

And you know you're not only bored and sad but you're also bitter because when you get a rare opportunity to meet a real life model, who is as hot in real life as she is in the photos of the magazines you write for (and not pose for), you secretly bet yourself she's an idiot. And you giggle a little bit because as it turns out she kinda is.

That's not actually the only way of being able to tell that you're bitter. You also know you're bitter when you look at wedding photos with love dripping off of them like sickeningly sweet skin-sticking dirty yellow honey, and you find yourself overcome by such unshakable certainty that the groom is gay. And then you launch a very lengthy speech about how you can always tell when love is real because the couple glow in each other's presence, and clearly these two, who just made the biggest mistake of their lives, don't.

You know you're not only bored, sad and bitter, you likewise realize that you're shy and a little paranoid because the prospect of walking into a room full of people, makes you think to yourself: Oh shit. You know you got it bad because the great misfortune of leading the prayer in the company flag ceremony makes you want to file sick leave. There goes your life as a social-climbing drunk and you start building a very emotional relationship with your computer and a software called Utorrent. Whenever you feel that this is just way too much isolation, and that it is absolutely imperative now that you connect to the rest of the world for your own sanity, you surf through the pages of Facebook and chat a little.

There truly are so many things you can learn about yourself when you sit down and think about it. You can even reasonably guess what you were in your past life. For example, if grooving to Cher's "Do you Believe in Life After Love?" strangely enough makes you feel better on a really bad day, clearly, you were once gay.

And you know you're weird too -- in this life and possibly in the last -- because everybody gossips about the fact that you are but you're the only one who doesn't think so. Not only that, you really truly honestly believe that you have never met stranger and sadder men and women in your entire life. The only reason that you're weird and they're not is because there are more of them.

Finally, you know you're not only bored, sad, bitter, shy, paranoid and weird, you're also nasty because you write a statement like that in a public blog even though you know they'd be able to read it. For a moment, you hesitate. But only for a moment. In the end, your mouth forms a hint of a smile, slightly sheepish, and you say: Guys, you know it's only literature....

And then suddenly, just like that, you know you're happy already :)

Mickey

I have to get rid of this small Mickey Mouse myself because Mom is not home and I just can’t take it anymore. So out of the closet came the trap and into a corner which I felt was strategic.  Because I always make it a point to know my audience and all other targets for that matter, not too long after I set up trap, Mickey Mouse indeed ran through the glue board.  He was too fast and too small though. And so cheating gravity, it managed to extricate itself from the adhesive. 

Obviously then, the wisest course of action was to move the trap into another strategic corner in the hopes that Mickey would be daft enough not to recognize the trap if he saw it again.  But you see I have never done this before. This being new to me, I suddenly got curious and wondered: Would Mickey be daft enough to fall into the same Trap if it remained in the exact same place looking the exact same way  or is the little rodent smarter than me? 

I wondered too whether it is true what they say that the likes of Mickey Mouse strike back after perceived attacks by chewing on your stuff because the strike back is as instinctive upon all animals as fear and territorialism.  Cats will scratch your eyes out when you step on their tails and dogs will bite your hands off when you get their food.  Mickey Mice, being less confrontational than other animals, attack your stuff.  I read in a book that they have a distinct ability of sensing when something or someone is less able to fight back. 

I’m more inclined to believe though that the holes they leave on plastic wares have less to do with anything else than raw need. Perceived attack or without, the Mickey Mice of the world chew on stuff for the same reason that seagulls lunch on fish. And they’d be like, “Nothing personal, Man. I’m just hungry.”  Mickey chews on stuff because it’s the next best thing to food conveniently laid out on the floor.

But just in case it makes a difference – there is no harm in trying – I began to speak in my most reasonable tone, “Look Mickey, wherever you are, I know you can hear me.  It is not my wish to harm you. However, you here in my house is not good.  There are sanitary standards to conform to.  Since obviously you will not listen to reason (I make no judgment here; A rodent’s gotta do what a rodent’s gotta do) you leave me no other recourse. This is not aggression only self-defense.”

I know my speech is not going to help. It will continue to chew on my stuff until it gets stuck onto the adhesive.  And that’s the one thing I genuinely envy about Mickey: being guided by nothing else but instinct without any regard for sanitary standards, house rules and general sense of decency. Won’t you tell me this before you die: Are you happier? I actually think that you may be.

***

Development: It did run onto the same trap in the exact same place. LOL. Cute.