License revoked

There are many licenses available from your friendly neighborhood government office, with varying degrees of difficulty in obtaining them. First, there is the license to drive. Then there’s the license to carry firearms. Then there is the license to loiter around your neighborhood while shamelessly exposing your beer belly to hapless onlookers. Then there is the license to shoot people who loiter around your neighborhood shamelessly exposing their beer bellies. 

And then, finally, we come to the license that makes D.O.M.s cower in fear: the license to wed.

Based on my own experience and that of my newly-minted wife (Yes, my three female readers, my fiancée finally tied the knot last March 7! Now there are many activities we can perform without fearing reprisal from her dad. But more about that in future columns), the application for a marriage license is slightly more complicated than bidding for a government broadband project. But despite these complications, I would like to applaud the National Statistics Office for their efficiency in sending to both of us certified true copies of our birth certificates. But, much to my dismay, I now have conclusive proof that I was not born on an alien planet and sent here as an infant on a rocket ship by my scientist father moments before my planet’s destruction (sigh…). And, similarly, my wife can no longer claim that she is an exiled princess from a Far, Far Away Land (although she still would like to be treated like one).

However, there were two marriage license requirements that I have found more boggling than the ability of our Chief Executive to stay in power. The first document was a relatively new pre-wedding requirement that has been subtly dubbed the Certificate of No Marriage. Apparently, even if I have proof that I have been living and leeching off parents since pre-circumcision days (which was not too long ago), our local city Hall still wants a validated assurance that I did not take in several brides from Mindanao during my early teens (childhood marriage rites with my sister’s Barbie dolls do not count).

But I found the second requirement even more boggling: I was supposed to produce a barangay clearance certificate that attested to my good moral character. Now, this was particularly troublesome. Firstly, has moral character (or the lack thereof) ever stopped anybody from getting married? Hell, moral character has never stopped anybody from running and staying in public office.  Second, in these morally ambiguous times, which group is responsible for determining what constitutes good moral character?  Will it be the barangay tanods? Will it be the CBCP? Will it be the Black and White Movement? Will it be Pinoy Big Brother? Or will it be my yaya? (Scratch yaya; she knows too much) And, lastly, what exactly are the boundaries of good moral character? Does being of good moral character mean that I have never browsed through pornographic material? Does it mean that I have never belted out a song or two at a private room in a Quezon City KTV bar? Does it mean that I never have thoughts MTRCB-censored thoughts while watching he Sex Bomb Dancers on Eat Bulaga? If that was the case, then roughly 99 percent of Filipino men would be unable to secure a marriage license for the rest of their testosterone-producing lives. 

Of course, I wouldn’t be protesting that much if my barangay captain happened to come across my, ahem, tastefully artful videos in selected bangketas around the metropolis. It’s a good thing the OMB raided these places before he issued the clearance. (Kap, I was young, ignorant and did not have baon for school when I did those videos for Art’s sake. Art promised he wouldn’t show them to anybody else.) 

However, no amount of self-flagellation can prepare you for the most perilous and spellbinding step in the marriage license process: the pre-marriage counseling session sponsored by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). 

According to the DSWD, a pre-marriage counseling session is supposed to provide engaged couples with a basis for making an informed and responsible decision about marriage. If that is the case, then I am flattered that the DSWD took such special interest in my impending marriage plans, aside from trying tooth and claw to prevent them. (That isn’t the job of the DSWD; that is the job of her dad). But more than seeking advice from a pre-wedding counselor who would teach me how to responsibly submit to my wife on our wedding night, I was also very excited because there might be giveaways at the end of the counseling session! I heard that in Quezon City, the city hall gives away transistor radios if you volunteer to have a vasectomy. I wasn’t quite ready for that big of a snip just yet. But maybe if I let them take a little snip of my foreskin, they might give me prepaid load. Or some candy.

After I had carefully marked with Pentel pen which area of my foreskin I was willing to donate to the government, my fiancée and I were ushered into a room in the City Hall that was called the Patient Relations Unit. “Ah, how flattering,” I told myself, “Soon-to-be wedded couples are given the same status as patients. I can’t wait for my prescription drugs!” 

My fiancée and I entered midway through the counseling session, but I thought we could easily catch up with the rest of the discussion.  Little did I know, I was entering into a freewheeling discussion, a discussion as freewheeling as a secondhand Japanese 10-wheeler truck losing its brakes on South Super Highway. And this 10-wheeler truck was about to ram its way into a fruit market. 

The counselor was a spry old-timer with a wiry frame, a fierce bush of eyebrows and an overdeveloped forehead. Here’s a rough translation from the vernacular:

“Let me tell you a story about getting married,” he shared with us and the six other couples in the room. “The other day I went to the palengke and bought some beautiful-looking, sweet-smelling fruits.  Pero, when I arrived home and made biyak the fruits, did you know what I found? You know what I found?” The counselor stroked several unkempt strands of chin hair and raised his eyebrows. “I found out that the insides of the fruit were bulok na! And when it is bulok na, can you still return it to the tindera? No!! You have to eat the fruit whether you like it or not.” He closed his eyes and groomed his eyebrows. “Now what does this all mean in the context of marriage?”

Aha! So this session was to be a philosophical discourse. “Sir, this means that we should make biyak the fruit before marriage to find out if it is already bulok?” I flashed my best Cheshire grin.

The counselor’s eyebrows exploded in disarray. “Yooooouuuu keep your mouth shut ha!!!” he waved his index finger perilously close to my nose. “You know that you cannot biyak that fruit without the solemnity of marriage!” His nose flared. “You just pray to God that the fruit you marry is beautiful inside and out.”

I quickly glanced at the fruit that I was marrying to make sure she was not bulok. Then I looked back at the counselor, “But, Sir, what is the point of discussing the fruits if—”

“Yoooooouuuu keep your mouth shut ha!!!” He thrust his index finger into my right nostril. “Yoooouuuuu just believe me because I have been a lay minister for our parish for the past 13 years, hmmmmmm.” He pursed his lips. “Remember, I only speak the truth dahil galit ako na sinungaling!” 

I tried to nod my head but it was difficult with his finger still lodged in my nostril.  

“Now let me tell you a true story of a two beautiful fruits that got married. But, little did the other fruit know, that one of the fruits was bulok inside.” He took a yellowing scrapbook from underneath the table. “Let me tell you the story of Ruffa Gutierrez and Yilmaz Bektas.” I felt a collective shudder in the room.  

After withstanding a 45-minute-long commentary on Ruffa’s career stretching back to her earlier movies — Tora Tora Bang Bang Bang, I Have Three Eggs, and Huwag Kang Hahalik Sa Diablo — many questions lingered in my mind: Whatever became of Viveka Babajee?   How do I determine the inner beauty of a fruit before I purchase it?  And exactly what type of counseling were we receiving? I was very tempted to sneak out of the room and double-check with the city hall officers if this Ruffa Gutierrez fanboy was really our pre-marriage counselor or if he was a patient like us as well. Because if he was our counselor, we would be needing our prescription drugs pretty damn soon.

Or else this was going to be a very long morning.  

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For comments, suggestions or a fruit basket, text PM POGI <text message> to 2948 for Globe, Smart or Sun Subscribers. Or e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail.com.

Next column:  The prescribed pre-wedding wisdom of the DSWD.