The sporting life can be fun. To some it comes as a phase, to others a lifestyle. However, little by little you realize that the liquid shimmer you put on your chest to attract glances is causing nothing but an eruption of acne. The booze you use to fuel your mojo is nothing more than the firestarter for disaster. The cute face that you thought was "it" suddenly annoys you and makes you pay for his gas. It’s all a denouement from there.
For pros, the Beck of dating, it’s all about the game, there is no losing just moving on. However, for non-pros with a serious handicap called romanticism, it all gets boring. It becomes a senseless opera of calculated chaos and scientific seduction.
With the rose-colored glasses of Hollywood romances off, I had a moment. Not too long ago and not too poignant either in the classical sense. It was my friend Louie Ysmael’s birthday at V, I had just come from the office wearing a tank top older than my last relationship, jeans and flip flops (cool factor: Havainas). My face as rich in oil as Kuwait devoid of any color. I was dressed to be killed. The place was packed but nary a familiar face came my way. I entered V, alone, you know how the steps light up when you step on it. Well, that day it seemed to light up so much brighter that I wanted my movie star on mogs shades that moment! Yet as it always happens to me, a certain catharsis always hits me at the most cliché of places.
Here I was in a place where I have entered with several of my "The One" du jours over the past few years. Now I was alone, dressed like Oliver Twist, and I felt so fuckin’ happening. It was going to be this way for a long time I said to myself... and there was nothing wrong with it at all.
There are plenty metaphors for being alone. You can be married and be alone. You can be polygamous and still be alone. You can be screwing more bulbs than Mr. Gadget and still be alone. My kind of alone was the best kind.
Being alone is sort of unnatural really. Biologically we are compelled to couple (or more depending how indulgent one is). We are culturally programmed to have a partner or pack. Check out dining places, its tables for eight, six, four or two. Those who choose to dine alone can opt for the bar, where the Lone Ranger can contemplate on his solitude with a dirty martini as his main course. Even having coffee alone solicits a few pitiful glances. Even in prison the most excessive punishment is being thrown in the solitary chamber. Being alone is supposed to hurt, says Shakespeare, Hornby and the guy in Cast Away. Then why do I feel so crazy good?
Sure, life is quite ironic these days listening to Burt Bacharach as I order sweet and sour pork from North Park at midnight surfing through Page Six. Com or any other inane website. After a breakup you are just ready to be a rock star, macking and playing the open field. Then depending on how many mooseheads you’ve successfully shot and mounted on your Hall of Shame, there comes a time when the game gets a little bit old. I was actually so excited the second season of 24 (as my friend Chut says upon grabbing our hermit stock of DVDs, "Goodbye cruel world!").
After a hurricane of seeing and partying, you learn to see the signs. In my case it was a black eye from the security guard gate bar at San Lorenzo (thanks schmucks!) that hit me sober and not an inch numb from alcohol. That should have meant something – stay home, get fat and watch 24. But no, with some Cinema Secrets magic (concealer that can literally erase your face) I was back in the dancefloor. Then my right leg went numb. Literally. For two weeks I was wondering what it was, I went through days of arduous tests and the only conclusion my doctor could draw up was that I had too much alcohol in my system (with a hacking cough as a smoker’s bonus to boot!). I was a wreck. All I had was myself and I was already dying on me, something had to give.
Society these days measure you for what you have. From the friends that you keep, the food that you eat and the man that you hoodwink into marrying you.
This you-are-what-you-are society are all about plurals and that’s why prescription drugs are at an all-time high. You are born alone, you die alone, so what’s wrong with living alone. Alone in a sense that you live in your own terms, you are comfortable enough to have yourself as your constant date and yet still live a life that is the anathema of Howard Hughes.
It’s not like I have given up on my Everest. I want to see how it feels like to truly believe that the world is my oyster. I have given up on many opportunities only to be near my dearest one. Not because separation is too hard, but because he might cheat (kidding!). The moment I was freed from my last teleserye, I swore never to subject myself to that kind of mental aerobic exercise of paranoia ever again. A few weeks later, I found myself downing cookies and wondering why my newest John Duh has not called yet.
It’s so tiring. And unless this man is the love of your life, the whole paranoia bit has a lot to do with ego. You don’t want to get the shaft – again! That’s the liberating thing about humility. You don’t end up wanting much, expecting much – and when fortune befalls on you, you understand why it all happened. Especially this holiday season, many single women cry wishing they could stuff their stockings with any guy who would call back. And single men will find themselves stuffing bills on stripper’s stockings. But being alone should not be this dismal.
If you find yourself in the fork of solitude, realize that this might be the last time you have your life for yourself. Just enjoy it, think of a life that will be crammed with other people’s wants and needs later on. For now it’s just you and your idiosyncrasies, so indulge them. Whether this last for a year or forever, I will be bathing in this freedom. Unlike Mallory, my kind of Everest is something I’ll stumble on while I’m dancing the foxtrot. No need to climb to my death. Yet when it happens it will be exquisite, like an Atkins devotee eating their first dish of Mac and Cheese for the first time! (I know how it feels I almost cried).
People have all sorts of excuses on why they choose to give on installment instead of just laying it on one blow. I understand that circumstance can make you wiser in terms of self-defense, but that spirit of adventure and abandon that pros in dating see as steroids (it may heighten the experience but you lose the stamina after), is a no-no to the educated Casanova.
In Manila, the choices are so limited really. You know the saying that when a camel is thirsty it will drink sand. Well there are millions of sandmen and sandwomen to settle for. However, is it worth settling for? I’m sick of it, I’m sick of the Becks of dating, I’m sick of me being a Becks of dating. I’m just going to have my Eggs Benedict at Lumiere, read my trashy tabloids alone on Sundays and maybe treat myself to a half bottle of bubbly as I watch Pulp Fiction for the 50th time. Two is great but one is not half bad at all! It’s all or nothing for me. Either way I will relish what I deserve for the moment.