It isn't easy being pogi
My weekly columns have been the product of progressive mallet pattern baldness, increasing LDL cholesterol levels and passionate procrastination.
“Pogi From A Parallel Universe” percolates in my gray matter for most of the week — a week marked by furiously scribbling down random thoughts at the back of my steno notebook while in the midst of business meetings or text-messaging myself column ideas in the wee hours of the morning (Note to wife: Yes, dear. I was just texting myself. Promise) and cramming in some late-night research from my “library” which consists of such landmark texts as Men Fake Foreplay, The Anatomy of Love A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray and M.A.C.K. Tactics: The Science of Seduction Meets the Art of Hostage Negotiation.
After cobbling together enough chicken scratches and unintelligible texts to call a rough draft, I try to sneak out a column over the weekend. And the operative word over here is “sneak.”
Because, between playing with my baby daughter, making romance romance with my wife, dabbling in my Asthanga yoga practice, buying my weekly produce at Mercato Centrale, replying to various office-related emails, visiting our residential projects in Batangas, writing and editing articles for Uno magazine, surfing the web for my Internet fix, attending children’s birthday parties, hosting a wedding reception or a corporate event, serving as a lay minister in church (seriously; no, seriously) and sneaking in (there goes that word again) a stolen out-of-town vacation with the family, I am probably only able to sneak in about two solid hours of column writing work during the wee hours of Sunday evening, when all that I have going for me is a surge of adrenaline, a tinge of willpower and a pot-full of barako coffee.
And if the writing gods looked favorably upon me that week, I will have e-mailed my thrice-revised column to my Philippine STAR Lifestyle editor, Ninang Millet Mananquil and my desk editor and fellow “M” columnist, Scott Garceau, before the National Anthem starts playing on television. Then, once I click the “send” button, my brain can finally go into shutdown mode and I can leave behind the struggle, the joy and the insanity that is humor writing and get on with what passes for my life. Until the next weekend.
And after 156 weekends (give or take a few weekends), my third essay compilation, Is It Hot It Here Or Is It Me? RJ Ledesma’s Imaginary Guide to Flirting, Body Language and Pick-Up Artists, was born. And this birth was anesthesia-free.
Although I had been writing a column for another paper for a year, my proverbial “big break” as a columnist came after I mustered up the courage to write an essay for the Philippine STAR’s 2006 Philippine Lifestyle Journalism Contest entitled “You Smell Good Enough to Mate: Dating in Your 30’s and Above.” I was fortunate enough to win the competition with my essay (the first few lines boldly proclaimed the original manifesto of this column: “Single men in our 30’s, we are dateless, we are confused, and we are going bald.”). Incidentally, the winning essay appears in the third book. (Yes, I want all of your money.) I was then offered a chance to write for (at that time, the newly minted) “M” (For Men) section along with fellow Lifestyle journalism winner Cecille Lilles and veteran columnist and seasoned expat Scott Garceau (Scott seasons very well).
Since then, I have been churning out a (more or less) weekly column for the past five (struggle-filled, joyous and insanity-laden) years. And every time I do some churning, column writing fills me with equal parts glee, terror and hair loss. Prior to my weekly writing cum torture session, it had been a good 10 years since I had churned out any material of creative merit.
My last decent (and “decent” is a relative term) pieces of work were way back in college when I snuck (I do a lot of sneaking around) into the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City with only two short stories to my name (for the completists of my work out there, like my mom, these stories were called “Beerhouse eulogy” and “Bangugnot”). But since that workshop, my creative writing output had been nada, unless you consider creatively-written business reviews and a 10-pound graduate school thesis slash paperweight.
Aside from my creative inertia, there were a lot of “reasonable” reasons that should have prevented me from working on a weekly column at that time. I was already slaving away as a COO (Child of Owner) in our family-managed real estate development business, editing a tasteful (and again, “tasteful” is a relative term) men’s magazine and hosting and producing a weekly comedy show of ill repute on the side (nothing relatively tasteful here). These responsibilities alone were enough to make free time, sleep and a full head of hair mere figments of my imagination.
Despite my reservations, I recall the introduction that was written by one of my creative writing professors, the great Dr. Cirilo Bautista, in his short story collection. Dr. Bautista compared the bane of creative writing to being that of the proverbial monkey clinging to your back. And if you don’t take good care of that monkey, that little primate will do go ape*&^% across the length of your spine (That description of the monkey’s business being mine and not the professor’s). Apparently, I have been lugging a feces-throwing ape on my back since I first read Green Eggs and Ham. So I had to be a tad more unreasonable.
Turning up my unreasonableness a notch, I thought it would be a creative challenge (much to the chagrin of my scalp) to write about the
“origin of relationships.” Because I’m just a geek that way. However, given that my knowledge on relationships was probably as extensive as the former president’s knowledge on the ZTE-NBN deal, I needed to immerse myself in research. And this immersion did not include getting plastered in bars while testing out pickup lines on women who were half my age and who wore clothes two sizes two small for them, God forbid (yes, God and my then girlfriend and now wife forbade it). Instead, this research entailed hoarding an indecent number of “relationship books” that men should never admit to owning, and much less to reading (especially when you have How To Make a Man Fall In Love With You proudly displayed on your shelf). But admittedly, there are some really great relationship books out there, such as my once oft-quoted Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps, which has saved me from both writer’s blocks and the wrath of my then-girlfriend-now-wife’s expertise with power tools.
And, contrary to the implied violence that I often write about, there has been no physical abuse of body parts, whether erogenous or not, in the reproduction of my column. What has been thoroughly abused, however, was a hyperactive imagination fueled by years of too many comic books (but well-written comics books, I must stay. Please check out the works of veddy good writers Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis), movies by the Monty Python crew, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Ben Stiller and Steve Martin, and the writings of Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Barry, David Sedaris and our homegrown world dominatrix Jessica Zafra (when I first read Jessica’s columns in another newspaper, I thought “They allow you to write all that in a national newspaper!?” I was quite the Jessica Zafra salivating fanboy. I hope that when she conquers the world, she will let me be her lapdog. Or lapcat, as the case may be).
So there goes my secret formula: Pinoy pop culture, the anthropology of relationships, the ‘80s (yes, all of the ‘80s), shock value, noontime variety shows, self-deprecation, Sunday tsismis (gossip) shows, armchair psychology, local politics, digressions and non-sequiturs, along with a running cast composed of Dirty Old Men (DOMs), Dirty Old Men-in-Training (DITs), No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs), Manny Pacquiao and his sparring mates, an imaginary Gary Lising and, of course, my wife, my yaya (nanny) and my stubbornly loyal three female readers. Shake the ingredients thoroughly and stick them in the microwave. Step back and wait for a nuclear meltdown.
The columns that appear in my third book were written over the last half of the 2000s, which accounts for several things: First, many of the political and pop culture references were ripped (there goes the implied violence again) from the headlines of the period, so they may already sound dated. So when somebody reads this book about 20 years from now (if books have not yet become extinct), it will probably be part of their required reading for Philippine history or Arts and Culture or Abnormal Psychology. Second, all of these essays were written during the last half of the 2000s, when the most unpopular Philippine president ever led this country (led this country, yes, but as to where I am still unsure of). As a humor columnist, the previous administration was just too rich with comic material (among other riches) that it would be a tragedy not to write about them. A buffet for bulimics, indeed.
Lastly, I wrote these essays before and after I had married the most wonderful woman in the world (I chronicled the whole affair in my second compilation I Do Or I Die: RJ Ledesma’s Imaginary Guide to Getting Married and Other Man-made Disasters. Yes, I do want all of your money). Thus, I have had to tweak most of these essays to state “then-girlfriend, now-wife” when I made reference to my Alpha and Omega. Unfortunately, I could not add other honorifics to her such as “boss,” “empress,” “mother to my adorable baby daughter and future 10 children” and “co-signor on my savings account,” among others.
And as the third book pollutes bookstores nationwide this week, I would like to thank my beloved ninang and mentor Tita Millet Mananquil for whipping me into shape and for keeping that whip handy whenever I get out of line. Thank you as well to my family at Anvil Publishing — Karina Bolasco, Gwenn Galvez. Ani Habulan, and Joyce Versales, for taking a chance on my work. And for continuing to roll the dice with this book.
Thank you to all of my three female readers who have been following my columns in the STAR, who visit my website (www.rjledesma.net), who have a copy of every issue of the magazine that I have worked on, and have several copies of my first two books to give to friends, relatives and fugitives, I am truly indebted to all of you. You are all helping subsidize my baby daughter’s graduate school education.
Thank you to all of my family and my in-laws for not disowning me after reading my columns. Yet. And thank you to the most wonderful woman in world and the love of my life, my wife Vanessa, who married me because of (but more often, in spite of) my columns. My wife is truly a lovely woman, a classy lady and an expert with the use of power tools. Thank you, my love, for your support. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you for your tolerance. Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for the hair-saving shampoo. But most of all, thank you for the gift of our daughter, Fortune. Both of you mean the third rock from the sun to me.
Lastly, I would like to thank the Big Man up there for the gift of writing. I hope he won’t let me spend too long a time in purgatory to flagellate me for all the columns that I will ever have written. I will continue, O my God, to do all my actions for the love of you.
Before I am abandoned by a thousand more hair strands as I wrap up this column, allow me to share with you the introduction that was written by fellow STAR columnist and Palanca Awards Hall of Famer Krip Yuson, I first made Krip’s acquaintance at the National Writers workshop and he is the DOM I look up to the most, next to Gary Lising. Pay reverence to this award-wining words:
“From the body English of flirtatious conduct to a litany of professional pick-up lines, he will lead sundry students to screw-up after screw-up. Inherent is his joy, after all, in making us all drown in the same roiling eddies of that river of fancied passion, where only ‘the brave and the bald’ can bob up and down to cleanse themselves of a ‘facial gayuma.’
“In a pheromone-dictated parallel universe, we would do well to arm ourselves with all the knowledge on Biblical knowing found in these pages. Thus should our evenings, midnights and even wee hours turn into models of satiety, if not frustration. Either way, we can thank the author, and ‘touch him in the moaning.’”
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The above excerpts are from the introduction to RJ Ledesma’s latest book, ‘Is It Hot in Here or Is It Me?’ The launch and signing is tomorrow at 6 p.m., Powerbooks, Greenbelt 4. You can check out the invite on www.rjledesma.net.
