Lunch at Victoria Court

I have a very close girl friend who invited me to lunch at the Ironman Suite of the Victoria Court motel on Cuneta Avenue in Pasay. She is part of that institution’s management team and she wanted my help on their 25th anniversary. With Pasay City’s changing profile, she had to send me very specific instructions on how to get there — U-turn here, turn right there, turn left here.

I remembered Cuneta Avenue as a narrow winding road with beautiful old homes. and some time thereafter occasional motels. It still looks the same but it’s cleaner now and with fewer cars passing. Maybe it has gone back to its quieter days, the way I remembered it when I was a little girl, before the extension of EDSA to Roxas Boulevard, when that street was called Dewey Boulevard.

I notice going in that every room has a name now — Ironman, Moulin Rouge, Venice, Oval Office — describing its theme. Downstairs is a garage where you drive your car in then the room boy or whatever you call them shuts the garage door. You climb upstairs, open the door and voila — the theme of the room hits you.

I don’t know if you care what theme you get. I imagine people go there with other more passionate intentions but in case you’re interested, there is a theme. Also I notice that the two cars that were parked were not going to the meeting, they were waiting for rooms. So I asked Tanya, my friend, what are your most crowded hours? “From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.,” she said. “Then I noticed that at night now we have more and more parties. We’ve had debuts. But more than that — 21st birthday parties. We have a lot of those.”

My advertising background kicked in. Eleven in the morning to 4 p.m. Click. Husbands and wives of other people going together during office hours so their husbands or wives do not think they are having extracurricular on the side. Also, students between classes. But parties at night in motels? This to me is a sign of changing relationships between parents and children. It means that parents now know and accept their children’s intimacies with their boyfriends and girlfriends and agree to spend on their parties in motels. I think the 21st birthday celebration in a motel is a sure declaration of independence in this country.

In America, when children go to college, they are being set free. They board in school and only come home on holidays. Now the college scene has become so liberal you can live with your boyfriend on campus. When your son or daughter graduates, she comes back home but only for a little while. She finds a job and goes off to live on her own, away from home. Of course, today’s US economy appears to be changing all that but they don’t need motels for the same reasons we do. Motels in the US are places for travelers to rest. It’s a big whole country, not like our 7,000 islands. People are perpetually driving across it and looking for places to stay. Of course there are also people who use motels for the same reason we do, but they are a secondary market.

Here we are hypocritical. We pretend to believe that everyone marries first and then they do what they need to do to have children later. Well, not anymore. These days most marriages happen because the girl is pregnant. One must ask — how does the girl get pregnant? Most likely in her home when her parents are out? But that’s always somewhat dangerous because there are maids who can tell on them. Most likely they go to motels where they can fall asleep afterwards then go home all for the price of a “short time” (three hours).

How much does that cost? I don’t know but it is affordable. Depending on what class you are — A, B or C — there is a motel that you can afford. I think Victoria Court would be AB. And the food is delicious. For lunch three-fourths of the menu served was vegetarian, because most of the other guests were, with chicken and spareribs thrown in for me. I am a meat eater. If I were to eat vegetarian, I’d be ravenous by three.

Is my generation still a part of the motel market? Amazing how generations change and also how they don’t change. Now I see myself as belonging to the pre-departure generation, slowly approaching 70. Now I live alone, something I’ve been doing since I was almost 60. If I were to have an affair now, unlikely but let’s just say I was, I could have it at home. How convenient. But who wants to have an affair with a woman my age? And how old would he have to be? Most of the men I know who are over 70 have problems with their prostates, so . . . or their hearts, which are endangered by Viagra so . . . maybe that’s why I would have to be a jaguar, meaning an old cougar. I would have to look for a younger man. But who has the energy for that? Me? I prefer to just watch TV by myself.

But then when I was in the States I remember how active the seniors were. My mother went to a seniors’ dance at a seniors’ hall. Every community had one. The same in Canada. Here? Well, enough that we have senior cards and can go to the movies for free or if you don’t have a booklet for less 20 percent or P120 instead of P150, reminding that when I was young we paid P1.20 to go to the orchestra section of Ideal Theater and P1.50 to go to the balcony. How times have changed!

Maybe we ought to have senior centers here but who will set them up? In the US and Canada the government did. Maybe we should just have Senior Giggling Rooms available from 5 to 7 p.m. in some motel. Maybe they can open up a room for seniors who wants to go there and get discounted beer and wine and laugh together because that’s all we seem to be able to do.

Tanya wants me to be the jewelry designer of her fashion show that celebrates the 25th anniversary of Victoria Court at the Eastwood Manor. The show’s director, Raymond Villanueva was there. Designers Jona Ballaran, Dita Sandico Ong, Tina Danlac, Twinkle Ferraren, Lizanne Cua were there. Hmmm, I said, let me think about it. I went back to the office and opened my date book, found that in the section for Personal Life Goals I had written: To live life to its fullest. Hmmmm. I woke up the next morning and said Yes! I will do it! I am 67 but I am funky. I can definitely design jewelry for the 25th anniversary of the premium motel in the Philippines once . . . before I am summoned out of the pre-departure lounge!

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