Never mind if his taping for Encantadia made him stay up late the night before. Benjie would be there in his knee-length shorts and rubber shoes, waiting for the boys at the dismissal area. When his schedule is lighter, Benjie would work out in the gym first before heading to the Katipunan campus. He would be more alert then, and the boys need not nudge him to sit up straight behind the wheel on the way home (that is, if they don’t pass by any of the restaurants along the way to grab a bite or two).
It’s been like this for a couple of years now for Benjie the single dad. It was rough sailing at first, he admits. Benjie would bring his sons with him to the hard court or the TV set just to spend quality time with them.
"They don’t want to stay with their mom," he reveals.
Things eased up a bit when his mother and sister arrived from Australia. They helped out the boys with their homework and did chores for them like buying cartolina they need for a school project the next day. It also helped that Andre and Kobe have been brought up to look after themselves.
"They’d fix their own breakfast and prepare their things for school upon waking up," says Benjie.
It also helped that Benjie himself grew up with a single parent – his mom. He simply passed on the survival tips he learned at home while growing up without a dad beside him.
So far, so good. Unlike the sons of some of his fellow cagers, Benjie’s boys need no prodding to play basketball and even join the sports club in school. They have also put their mestizo features to good looks via TV commercials.
"They love it so much they even ask me when their next VTR will be," laughs Benjie. That’s because he allows them to buy a toy or whatever they fancy from their earnings in the commercial.
This Christmas will be different from the rest, since Benjie will be promoting his first Metro Filmfest movie, Exodus: Tales from the Enchanted Kingdom, where he plays Tayho, the Earth Elemental.
Benjie, his sons, mother and sister, will move their traditional out-of-town Christmas celebration a little after Dec. 25. They will also watch the movie together.
"The boys are already excited," reveals Benjie. "They already know the kind of work I do. Once, I even brought one of the props – a dismembered hand at home. It didn’t scare them at all."
The boys will see their dad transformed into a strange creature with blue-grey skin, a silver belt and free-flowing hair on his otherwise clean-shaven scalp.
"Wearing that rubber latex costume from head to toe is no joke," recalls Benjie. "My skin can’t breathe at all. I got so suffocated I almost collapsed on the first shooting day. Bong (Sen. Bong Revilla, who produced the movie to the tune of P70-M) noticed this and asked for a shooting break."
Benjie was wiser on the second shooting day. He brought along a bottle of Gatorade to replace all that sweat he was emitting and asked that an electric fan be turned on beside him to cool things a bit.
Next year promises to be just as good for Benjie, who will join the cast of Encantadia Book II.
Maybe next time, Benjie will bring home a magic sword from Encantadia Book I for his boys.