Making out with chickens

Last Saturday, despite the alarming developments on the bird flu we still found it in ourselves to laugh at the absurd front-page shot of the health secretary and WHO official as they chowed down fried chicken with much chagrin for the press despite our rusty post-inebriated selves. Whether it was a poor moment shot catapulted into unfortunate immortality, their contemplating on their transience or simply cringing over the absurdity of it all, the shot was definitely counter-productive in promoting the delicious (and safe) goodness of chicken. My friend Miguel told us that he heard that one is really only at extreme risk when they are exposed to the feces or bodily fluids of the infected birds, to which my friend Marcel, politically incorrect as usual retorted, "Well I guess I’m safe since I’m not making out with any chickens."

Just like a chicken nugget of wisdom, I realized that aside perhaps from my horndog friend, we have been making out with chickens.

Why is everyone so afraid these days? I mean take all these CEOs or corporate divas who I suppose through empirical knowledge have found that success can be manipulated. After all, was it not the legendary Bob Evans who once said, "Luck is opportunity meets practice." To a certain extent Bob is right, but look what happened to him. Despite his wealth, power and supposed Midas touch he still lost Ali McGraw to Steve McQueen on the set of his own movie The Getaway. That spirit of adventure has now been immured in our own concocted brew of maieutic logic. Without much kerfuffle and fanfare, the romantic era of today is as exciting as a spreadsheet.

I have always believed that one of the best treats in life is a hotdog sandwich with all the fillings. It’s bad for you. it’s made with all the nutritionally deficient stuff that makes life good. There are those who try to make it healthier by putting soy and crap like that, but is it really for the better? No one really wants to know how the hotdog is made unless you are out to spoil the fun. Sometimes it’s the thought of a risky treat that puts the hot on the dog.

We all know romances more often than not are as good as doomed once they begin. If they were all so kind with their endings then Hollywood with all its romantic trappings would cease to exist. So what’s one to do in the precarious eggshell dance of falling in love? When I first got my heart broken I never felt so alive with such virgin delilah. I had no clue what to do but vowed never to let myself be this way again. My days of woolgathering and toothsome fantasies were over, curdled in a bin of soured disappointment. Then I was never the same. Then like a paranoid OC who forgot to take her meds for a week, I locked everything thrice and questioned with searing scrutiny every knock that came. I was tired but safe. Then one day just as easily as I closed myself to the idea, I chucked it with incongruous abandon.

In a way people play games to cheapen the value of the race. You play those withdrawal dances, the Go Fish, seeing who’s got the royal flush and whenever you feel butterflies in your breadbasket you chide yourself for being so foolish. It becomes a fixture of control. Like a chess game, every move counts, all is deliberated with and mistakes are reasons to cut off your arm. All this trouble because we never want to ever feel that blazing pain of heartbreak the way we first felt it. Ironically, in protecting yourself you cease to become alive.

People have their own ways of protecting themselves. The emotional Kevlar vests vary from choosing the wrong person (with foresight it will end anyway), to being the artful dodger of commitment (never quite artful in the end however), novocaining oneself (it’s all one big numb laugh), to just running away when the One comes along (here comes delilah) to flippantly sleeping around (to shred romance in diaphanous noodles of crepuscular adventure). Then as many of my veteran player friends have discovered they are alone with only notches in their bedposts to show for (as I said about the artful dodger – not quite artful indeed).

We have so much to lose these days or so we think. The real world as we know it has no compensation for nuisances such as heartbreak, commitment and the other accouterments that pertain to the bleeding heart. It’s easy to take Horace’s maxim to heart: "Subdue your passion or it will subdue you" just because in the superficial stock market of the real world it makes sense.

More often than not one finds himself or herself evaluated by having the right job, right look (well OK just maybe in the more vacuous lot of fashion and fight) and right arm candy (even if you guys are the mini version of The Tower of Babble). Many find it hard to risk chipping away at that charily manicured façade. I mean you built a life with solid building blocks such as prudent career choices, sensible partners and trimming the edges as to put a scupper on unexpected delilahs that may add weed to the Astroturf.

Someone once told me that though he liked the excitement of a volatile harlot, a practical choice would always be a vanilla chick. But who wants to be with a Volvo ? A big gamble on a purring and impish set of wheels may create a few hairs in your back to stand and perhaps streak you with brushes of danger. But as Jack Kerouac and other men of adventure would lead us to believe it is in the journey and not the destination that matters. With a wildcard that causes you to throw caution to the wind, enjoy the ride and who knows you might even get there faster than the others.

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E-mail me at ystylecrew@yahoo.com.