an_jelly

I lead

And chase, run, push, face, fight and fear

I Follow

And wander, wonder, pause, ponder and forget

Scared to look behind me and find

Nothing

In meaningless strangers and wasted years and worn, worn lines.

Nothing

In leading the life I thought I wanted to lead.

Teenagers are physiologically designed to be idiots. And that time of your life spent being a teenager/idiot is purposefully planned for you to be able to look back and shake your head in amusement and slight disgust over the things that you said or did or didn’t. Like needing everyone to like you or having to be cool or obsessing about having the most friends or ever owning a pair of high-heeled Sketchers and sunflower appliqués on hats.

Yet teenagers are also programmed to be naïve and unaffected. And for the rest of your life, you reminisce (with a little humor) such a time when…

Falling in love (the first few times) always meant forever. Plans of kids and weddings spewed about throughout fourth period gym class amidst sweaty t-shirts stuffed in muddy JanSports.

Every fight with a friend or every confrontation meant tragedy with great possibility for large tears and very public pronouncements of “friendship over’s”.

All you had was your allowance and strangely enough you managed to fit lunch, a movie, fares and popcorn in one hundred pesos –on a date for two.

College was a vague, faraway reality that held the promise of cool, almost-grown-up things you (also) vaguely imagined being able to do.

Graduating college was a vaguer, even-farther-away reality that held the promise of super cool, totally-grown-up things you imagined being able to do.

Everything you wanted to do was still before you. And you had the advantage of innocence –you had no idea what could be done; no idea what couldn’t.

 No idea what couldn’t. None.

 For the rest of your life you spend waddling in self-doubt and second guessing, you find yourself wishing you could just be that idiot again, minus the high-heeled Sketchers.

September 20, 2009

For the record, my BMI belies my own mental image of my state of obesity. Still, for the very rare times my courage overwhelms a collection of adversaries (namely contempt, apathy and desolation) and I actually get myself on a scale, I rely on a strong dose of willpower (sometimes dusted with chocolate) to refrain from throwing the scale out the window –myself on it.

There are times I find myself staring at certain individuals (who shall remain unnamed because I would actually still like to retain certain things like my job and some body parts), and think, they too, started out just like me –increasingly pudgy, somewhat defiant and effectively in denial.

Of course it doesn’t help any that I have a certain “friend” (who shall remain unnamed because I would, again, still like to keep my workplace a harmonious area of secretly seething resentment) whose idea of warmth and nurturing involves breaking into the office at eleven and calling me “fat girl” over the cubicle walls.

(Now before you can virtually lean over and proclaim “Oh you poor fat, este, SOFT girl.”, this story unfolds…)

So in my half-baked attempt to break my routine fifteen-hour sleeping marathons on weekends, I woke up quite early one Sunday and decided to take a walk. Crossing Kalayaan, I directionless-ly ambled on to Fort Bonifacio and in no hurry at all, plugging in my iPod, pausing here and there, walked a pace that could barely be confused with exercise.

 I allowed joggers and iron-clad-calved runners to pass me by and slowed even more for a 60-something lolo whose high-waited gartered jogging pants and water bottle gripped by weathered earthy hands gave the impression of placid senility –or so I thought.

He gestured to me with both his hands making curved shapes. I smile vaguely but he indicated for me to take off my earphones and when I did he proceeded to very matter-of-factly state –You’re very fat. You should run faster.

Rage was surpassed by sheer astonishment and for the rest of the “walk” I was shaking my head in laughter. Ah… to be old and care none for propriety or decency. Was I inspired to lose weight even more? Not as much as I was determined to reach that same age when I can tell anyone or anything else. I can hear myself now- F*ck you weighing scale!

There is really just one thing I try to remember during this month and it's this....

September 2006

Dear Calai,

Do you remember…

 How you adamantly refused to join all those silly high school pageants that we had? The moment you gave
it a shot, you won first place.

How much we talked during biology class? While everyone was busy discussing femurs and phalanges, we were
talking about boys and crushes and the biology teacher’s hygiene.

 How we sang time and again, over and over the songs from Les Miserables? We were both so happy we weren’t
one of the characters who had to wear footmops on their heads.

How we ate sugarless polvoron and diabetic latik back in fourth year during physics class? Thank you
by the way for letting me copy all those exercises. I couldn’t have passed
without you.

Do you remember Calai…

How your smile lit up the room? You were often laughing, mostly grouchy, at times irritated… but people
would always know how you felt from that smile of yours.

How we talked about the future? Fourteen or fifteen and somehow our favorite topics were of love and
life.  Things that I guess, now, we both know,
will never make sense to a fifteen year-old.

Do you remember Calai? Coz I
do. We do. We will always remember you.

And we will remember….

Every smile that touched your
lips. Every laugh that graced your face.

Every song that you breathed
life to. Every dance that you enjoyed.

Every joke that you tried
to make. Every sweet, thoughtful thing you said.

Every day that you touched our
lives. With a few words, or a hug or by just listening quietly like you always
do…. We hope you’re listening now.

And we may never find the
words to say goodbye to you our friend.

 And we may mourn for the
lives that you could have lived.

And the dreams and the plans
that should have come true for you.

And we may never ever come
to understand why you had to leave so soon.

And we may cry for the pain
of losing you.

But everyday that you spent
with us, making us laugh, talking us through our pain, sharing stories… we will
remember. We will relive.

 And our memories will be of
happy ones because that what you did. You made people happy.

You will be missed.

You will be remembered.

You are loved and always
will be.

September 2007

“Nobody said it was easy. It’s such a shame for us to part… No one ever said it would be so hard. Take me back to the start.”- The Scientist by Coldplay

Dear Calai,

It’s been a while since I’ve last written you a letter. But our talks, although brief and certainly in one direction, have been lasting and reflective. It doesn’t help that whenever I imagine you responding to me, you have that sarcastic and hysterically mocking smirk plastered on your perpetually beautiful face, and at which thought I can only sigh and miss you with undeniable longing. Those wings and halo of yours don’t suit you at all by the way. But I can definitely imagine your voice blending in with angel’s hymns. We never had time for our last duet.

I don’t think I ever told you but it took me such a long time for me to process what had happened after Ada called me that day, September 6, 2006. I remember being in a cab on my way to the airport for a trip I was very excited about. Hearing his voice over the phones so somber I remember a certain wave of nausea before this sick, ill feeling came over me. The next thing I knew I was standing over you brushing your cold, cold check. I was just getting used to that fantastic haircut of yours from our last trip to Bogo.

We were still plotting out our next out-of town that last time I saw you in the hospital. And before that you were still laughing at me wearing my gym shoes and ranting on and on about the book “A Walk to Remember” that Chester gave you. And I was laughing too. I was happy that you still had the resolve to plot out your trips after you’d get better. I was sad to see you so gaunt and weak. I was guilty for feeling sorry for you. And I was crying because I didn’t know if I should be saying goodbye.

A lot more should-haves and could-haves came after that, and a lot of things that I’m sorry for never getting around to doing or saying while you could still hit me back with your witty retorts and clever comebacks.

It’s only been a year and we the mere, meager and derisory mortals you left behind have scampered about trying to make sense of the mess we proudly call our lives.As I told you during our last imaginary conversation, I’m learning to wash my own undies and hail a cab here in Manila while attempting to train and write (yes, apparently the latter set of skills are only secondary for your survival here). Ira is going to be a doctor soon, an extremely hot one too (her patients will be hard-pressed to remain lucid). Ruth is her nurse counter-part as the hotest clinical instructor in Cebu (No, there haven’t been any sexual harassment claims from her underage students.). Ada and Bayong are still “losers” (you wouldn’t have fit in the club at all). Leslie and Jay-R are still working out the plans of their wedding and figuring out how to pay for everyone’s flights once they’re ready to walk that aisle. Roui is still in love and fabulous. RADS is in the US now and Josh is earning a whole bundle of money. Jotay is still single and Jomy is supposedly dating someone. Our batch has proudly turned out little darlings courtesy of Ria and Tercy and Janens, but the boys remain hopeless unless you count Corny’s adoption.

But I’m sure you know all of this as you gleefully snicker at how dismal we must look from up there. But I hope sometimes we make you smile with pride too. Like when I remember what phalanges and the obicularis aris are or where your coccyx can be found, courtesy of Ma’am Conejos or why Estrada is evil and why the Philippines is hopeless, thanks to Ma’am Langomes.

Whenever there is a tragedy, I can’t help but thank heavens you can be spared what pain or grief or misery there has to be in the world. But whenever there is a joy to be celebrated, I miss you terribly because when I think of beauty and love, I think of you.

You have been missed. You are missed. You will always be missed.

“Happy 24^th birthday! When I was your age I had 6 kids already.”

-          Mama,  11/08/09 6:53AM

A story I will tell until I’m well into old age or at least until the next time I encounter something as funny and matter-of –factly said.

What started as a quick trip from Paseo de Roxas to Buendia corner Ayala to meet a Greater Manila-geographically challenged friend for coffee ended up taking me to the airport and back through rush hour traffic.  There really is no other thing to be done when someone you’ve known for eleven years; your will-take-you-to the-toilet-when-you’re-too-drunk-coz-you-might-piss-your-pants friend; the guy who (thank God) was always just a great, great friend to have around tells you he’s leaving for London in two days and wont be back for at least two years.

I mean who cares if he’s fooled around with/slept with/been the object of affection of more than just a few of your female friends and more often than not left you to deal with the grief of these hormonal teenage females post-mortem?

What does it matter that he will never (ever, ever) fail to jump at every chance to remind you of all the stupid little things that you may or may not (remains to be a point of argument for those times when I was too inebriated to recall) have done for the past decade? I.e. DVD case, sunrise/sunset.

Why concentrate on the itty, bitty details like how he must be top five of the horniest bastards that you know and has, at one point in time, tried to make out with you under the guise of a ride home AND THEN bragged about it to the rest of “the boys”?

All I could really think about was that this was the boy I met on the staircase outside of the Freshman Earth classroom reading his book like the nerd that we all were. I asked him a question that started a conversation that lasted us eleven years…

And to use the words of another dear friend who at the time of saying this had her mouthful of sand cursing men the world over, “Ada is the BIGGEST asshole…”

But he is my asshole. I love him dearly. I wish him well. And I will traverse Buendia to Pasay on Sweldo Friday early evenings anytime to see him off as he heads towards the rest of his life.

Here's the deal: Start with 100% and subtract 1% for everything that you've done. Don't bother typing answers to the question, it makes it more interesting! The lower the score, the nastier you are. Then repost as I'm _% Virgin.

1. Smoked?
2. Drank alcohol?
3. Cried when someone died?
4. Been drunk?
5. Had sex?
6. Been to a concert?
7. Given a handjob/gotten a handjob?
8. Given a blowjob/gotten a blowjob?
9. Been verbally/sexually harassed?
10. Verbally/sexually harassed somebody?
11. Felt someone up and/or been felt up?
12. Laughed so hard something came out of your nose?
13. Cheated on a boyfriend/girlfriend before?
14. Been cheated on by a boyfriend/girlfriend?
15. Been to prom?
16. Cried at school?
17. Gotten lost in a WalMart or a department store?
18. Went streaking?
19. Given or received a lap dance?
20. Had someone of the opposite sex in your room?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 81%

21. Had someone of the opposite sex sleep over?
22. Slept over at someone of the opposite sex's house?
23. Kissed a stranger?
24. Hugged a stranger?
25. Went scuba diving?
26. Driven a car?
27. Gotten an x-ray?
28. Hit by a car?
29. Had a party?
30. Done serious drugs?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 75%

31. Played strip poker/darts?
32. Got paid to strip for someone?
33. Ran away from home?
34. Broken a bone?
35. Eaten sushi?
36. Bought porn?
37. Watched porn?
38. Made porn?
39. Had a crush on someone of the same sex?
40. Been in love?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 68%

41. French kissed?
42. Laughed so hard you cried?
43. Cried yourself to sleep?
44. Laughed yourself to sleep?
45. Stabbed yourself?
46. Shot a gun?
47. Trash talked someone and then acted like their best friend the next day?
48. Watched TV for 9 consecutive hours?
49. Been online for 9 consecutive hours?
50. Watched an animal die?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 61%

51. Watched a person die?
52. Kissed and/or messed around somewhere with at least 1 person present?
53. Pranked somebody?
54. Put somebody in the hospital?
55. Snuck into someone's room and/or your own room after being out?
56. Kissed somebody of the same sex?
57. Dressed punk?
58. Dressed goth?
59. Dressed preppy?
60. Been to a motocross race?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 55%

61. Avoided somebody?
62. Been stalked?
63. Stalked someone?
64. Met a celebrity?
65. Played an instrument?
66. Ridden a horse?
67. Cut yourself?
68. Bungee jumped?
69. Ding dong ditched somebody?
70. Been to a wild party?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 51%

71. Got caught stealing something?
72. Kicked a guy in the balls?
73. Stolen a boyfriend/girlfriend from a friend?
74. Went out with your friend's crush?
75. Got arrested?
76. Been pregnant?
77. Babysat?
78. Been to another country?
79. Started your house on fire?
80. Had an encounter with a ghost?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 47%

81. Donated your hair to cancer patients?
82. Been asked out by someone that you never thought you'd be asked out by?
83. Cried over a member of the opposite sex?
84. Had a boyfriend/girlfriend for over 3 months?
85. Sat on your butt all day?
86. Ate a whole carton of ice cream all by yourself?
87. Had a job?
88. Gotten cut from a sports team?
89. Been called a whore?
90. Danced like a whore?

PERCENTAGE SO FAR: 39%

91. Been mistaken for a celebrity?
92. Been in a car accident?
93. Been told you have beautiful eyes?
94. Been told you have beautiful hair?
95. Raped somebody?
96. Danced in the rain?
97. Been rejected?
98. Walked out of a restaurant without paying?
99. Punched someone/slapped someone in the face?
100. Been raped?
TOTAL PERCENTAGE: 36% VIRGIN

I stole this quiz from my friend Ruth to prove a point. At a maintained 36% innocence I can still chicken out majorly when I’m in the same room as a guy I’ve had a crush on for a WHILE.

As Malyn succinctly put it, “Nababading ka pa rin pala.”

When you’re a child you think the ultimate liberation is being able to eat anything you want, whenever you want.

When you’re 23 and eating cereal for dinner, it’s not funny. It’s really not.

While attempting to write this day’s entry, a Facebook pop-up chat window appeared where Mel Jabol, an old high school batchmate asked the question, Is your surname still Macachor or has it been changed already? Diba there was a survey in high school that said you’d be the first one to get married or something like that?

It was a whole book, in fact, of badly scrawled questions compiled like –who you think will be the first one to croak, most likely to end up like a nun, most likely to become the next Hitler.

My name turned up in a several pages but none so prominently as the one that asked, who do you think will get pregnant first.

Ah, yes, the cruelty of teenagers who couldn’t possibly have known better even if they tried.

Having been reminded of this, I thought about the new group in Facebook I was invited to –USC -SGS Batch 1998 reunion. Nave Exclusivo (formerly Batoctoy) and Andrew Fanlo are organizing an 11 year get-together.

I mentioned this too, to Zachary Estuesta, having bumped into him at my last Nike event where we ended up calling Enrico Llanto for good laughs.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that we were yet to be shaped into such judgmental and discriminating individuals when we were twelve. I can only imagine the bets that could have been formed then. I can’t be too sure I wouldn’t have ended up in the page that said –most likely to be killed for being such a bitch.

Fortunately there are molds that we break away from –because we had a life-altering experience, because we grew a pair, or simply because we developed a few more brain cells.

Who’s to say I won’t be a completely different person in five years? Or maybe I’ll end up pregnant and married, just as predicted.

In eight days, I’ll have turned a year older yet again. But every year since twenty has really been little more than just a smidgeon of a mark. Then of course, there’s my friend’s contention that I really am not human until 25 anyway and so my counting has been a bit blurry. Sometimes I jokingly say I’m 19 or exaggerate and say I’m 27. And then there are times when I really, truly forget and insist I’m 22 and since I suck at Math, I really am not guilty of lying despite knowing well I was born in '85.

Miguel has been extraordinarily bouncy about the whole thing. To which I crabbily respond, “What are we, 13?”

Maybe I wish I still were sometimes. Maybe then magical days like birthdays can still mean something.

Karen: “Ang gastos ha.”

Me: “Okay lang yan. I’d rather spend this now. Magsasardinas at pan de sal na naman tayo next week anyway.”

Jamon de Copa, Chorizo Pamplona, peppercorn cheese, uber-special Tawilis Adobados, Nuestras Tortillas Jabugo style and deargodthisisheaven Marquesa de Chocolate.

Thank you. Really, thank you JC de Terry for making my next week’s dieting and penny-pinching sooo worth it.

My boss and I work so close to each other that we share not only an extension but also a single cubicle wall. Aside from the yelling over of instructions, quips and daily snide comments over the same emails, there’s also the YM-ing and Lotus IM-ing of what top this girl was wearing with these shoes or what I really thought about what she said over this meeting.

This Thursday’s YM was no different except for Team Galit Mother’s unusual momentary resemblance to Team Perky. She announced the news over Yahoo Web Messenger’s happy bouncy round, yellow little faces and I went around the red cubicle wall to give her a hug –a first actually in almost two years of working together over that very wall.

I sent an sms to my family and best friends who wasted no time sending over their congratulations, best wishes, warm hugs and kisses, at least electronically. But in terms of real human contact, that hug was the closest thing I got to family and the truest expression of happiness I could share for now.

I’ve known for quite a while now but I can still barely imagine the seat beyond the wall empty in just a matter of days. It’ll be like saying goodbye to family all over again.

When was the last time we saw each other?

Dunno. About three months ago? When were you moving out?

I guess around that time.

We should go on doing this.

You mean catching up once every three months?

I mean seeing each other every now and then.

You mean a quarterly review.

Yeah, a quarterly review.

As a child I always loved spinning –turning myself round and round until I was heady and disoriented and near nausea. I would do it in parks and playgrounds, on beds and grass, and in every possible room in the house. I remember once, having spun so quickly and for so long, I crashed into and broke the glass pane of a cupboard.  And as my sisters carried me, bloody and barely conscious to the doctor’s, I remember nothing but the giddy rush and swirling lights while spinning and spinning and spinning...

Spinning without sense, spinning at the most inappropriate times, spinning for one but yourself.

Your feet bruise from the rapid steps you try to take to propel yourself so that everything else is a blur –no longer objects; just brief wisps of color, fleeting and free. Your mind loses focus and empties with each turn so that no voice of reason can plead for your stopping –no longer attached to people; just floating echoes muted and muddled.

Faster and faster, around and around in a dizzying haze of light and shadow, space and emptiness, abandon and appeal.

And then you crash…

Rainy days I associate with going to the dentist. And going to the dentist I associate with Pete’s Kitchenette – a small restaurant my designated adult companion (read: any of my 4 elder sisters or my actual parents) used to bribe me with just so I would go to the dentist, but that’s another story altogether.

Not that my dentist was anything like the stereotypical, sadistic injection-wielding maniacs you see on the tube. He was actually nice and cute and perpetually late for an appointment. Still, what is the joy to be found for a six-year-old trapped to a chair for hours while the dentist’s assistant tries to flirt with your sister?

His office had a dark and humid windowless waiting room with red walls, red carpeting and an almost empty aquarium. Don’t think edgy, modern red. Think ifbloodgushedoutofyourorificesandfloodedthecarpetyouwouldntnotice red.

 And while waiting there in that dreary room for the person who would eventually be pulling out your teeth or drilling holes into them, it was as though you will never see the light of day again…

I hate the rain.

You could be feeling financial pressures that won't easily go away, yet you can relieve the tension by addressing the issues head-on instead of pretending they don't exist. Fortunately, there might be a magical solution to your problem, even if you aren't exactly sure what it is. A friend could come to the rescue with the right advice or a bluebird could fly through your window with just what you need. However, you must remain approachable and keep your windows open.- Today’s Twittascope

There’s probably only one thing that I remember and have found to be endlessly helpful among all mathematical processes and that is cross multiplication. So say for instance I wanted to know what percentage f*cking tax takes away from my pay check every fifteenth, I multiply my gross earnings by a hundred and divide it by the peso amount that gets whisked away.

Since it’s a Friday, we spent longer time that usual at our after-hours 9^th floor routine. By the time Mel caught us, I was half-way done explaining to Joyce plan A of How-to-keep-me-afloat-until-the-next-fifteenth-scheme. A radical (read: will never happen) idea that involved the words GFE (girlfriend experience), extra charges for outside of Metro Manila and anal fisting. The intricacies of the fantasy are far too jointly insane while rational to put to words. Mel closed off the disgusted laughs and slightly-serious musings with a ‘Poverty does not become you’ observation and that was that.

We ended up with a much more GP idea. They pledged to participate in my feeding program. No, I mean MY FEEDING program. Thank you Twittascope and thank you Mel and Joyce, I didn’t have to result to the end chapter of Belle de Jour.

Playing electronic Scrabble with Joyce as I’m trying to scrape together a decent few lines for Project Treinta and waiting to grab dinner somewhere cheap.

How ever did humanity waste time before the vast black hole known as the Internet? I’m sure they must have some minutes down rubbing sticks together to create fire and I suppose it took them a while to fix the transistor radio down to the correct dial. But what did employees for instance, used to pretend to be doing before the dawn of the convenient excuse of familiarizing themselves with the facets of social media?

I should be one to recall, really. I am of the generation who one point: owned a Walkman and now has an iPod; had to dozens of 1MB floppy discs and can now plug a 200G external drive; left messages for friends  via EasyCall (less the words hate, kill, fuck) and now enjoys Tweeting via her 3G, WLAN connectable mobile phone.

All that said, I lost the game miserably. And because of the glories of modern technology, it was a slow and painful death that lasted a day or two.  Not bad for my first ever game.