How do you cram the essence of a lifetime into a Facebook photo gallery, or tribute post, or a eulogy with a time limit? Especially if the lifetime belongs to someone we can all agree, as all your posts attest, was the kindest, nicest, friendliest, most sincere, cheerful, and positive person any of us ever met? It’s close to impossible, but I’ll try.
JR Isaac is not going to like this age exposé, but I first met him around 1988 when he was managing Portfolio, his brother Raymund Isaac’s studio, which shared a space with my modeling agency Faces Asia, and where I would hang around between shoots and castings. This time also marked the start of my “adoption” into the wonderful Isaac family as I began to get close to the Isaac brothers, and their incredible mother Elisa, a.k.a. “Mama E.”
But it wasn’t until 2004 when JR and I became reacquainted and started to become close. I was newly single after a long-term relationship, had moved to Legazpi Village, and one night bravely ventured on my own to bar du jour Dream Bar (formerly Giraffe for the 99 percent of non-millennials in the room), where JR held court as their PR, and where I experienced what we have now all come to know as the JR Magic, or his ability to make you feel welcome, at ease, and at home, through his friendliness, sincere warmth, and kindness.
“You know what kind of person he was?” former Candy, Seventeen, and Smart Parenting editor-in-chief Mia Fausto Cruz told Yummy editor-in-chief Paulynn Chang. “If you walked into an event or party were you didn’t know anyone, and he saw you, he would approach you with a big smile, talk to you, and never leave your side until he was sure you found someone else to talk to.”
I know exactly what Mia meant, and this sentiment was echoed by so many people in these last few days.
Anyway, pretty soon I was a regular at Dream Bar, and together with his close pals Bobby Tanjuatco and Lance Feliciano, we comprised the constant foursome we later laughingly dubbed Apat na Sikat (another ‘70s reference only non-millennials will get!). JR and I became even closer when we found out that coincidentally, in a matter of months, we would be moving into the same building nearby. Our apartments were even blessed on the same day! We soon became part of each other’s daily lives, and were each other’s steady dates — whether to the 101 events we had to attend for work, six-hour-long yakfests at M Café, or out at night from cocktails to dinner to clubbing to brunch, sometimes with a disco nap in between. Our de rigueur rounds: from Temple to Embassy to Cafeteria, or from Nuvo to Absinthe to V Bar!
JR had initiated my shy, old, never-left-the-house self into the best of Manila nightlife, which he was the king of, and which we all know is SOP for the newly single. He taught me how to have a good time, not take life too seriously, and enjoy every moment life has to offer. JR’s life was YOLO before there was YOLO, and under JR’s wing and holding his hand, you never had FOMO (Please ask the millennial nearest you what these acronyms mean).
We were inseparable. Our bond couldn’t have happened to two more polar opposites. He was an extrovert—so friendly, always saying hi to everyone, and I was an introvert awkwardly navigating social situations, faking it ‘til I made it. Politically we were on very, very opposite poles indeed. I’m a Grammar Nazi, and let’s just say grammar was not his forte. Although we were both religious…(about working out, that is) I think my healthy diet was on the opposite spectrum of his daily favorite fare — Tapa King, and mind you, not just Tapa King, but Tapa King Budget.
It didn’t matter, because it was very hard not to fall in love with JR. I had never met anyone so open, so accepting, so non-judgmental, so full of unconditional love. You could tell him your innermost thoughts, cry on his shoulder, trust him with your darkest secrets. So generous with his time and attention, and so sincerely interested in you, always asking you questions about yourself to the point where you already felt awkward about why anyone would be so interested in you and what was going on with your life. He’d never really insert himself into the conversation, and genuinely focused solely on you, never wanting to draw attention to himself or burden you with his woes — sadly until the very end, when he refused to bother anyone about his ailments even if we all definitely could have helped him.
He always, always saw the positive in everything, and as many of you have vouched, did not have a mean bone in his body. At every bitch-and-bash fest, whether online or IRL, he never really participated. If he ever joined in, it was funny, never mean. And even when he was the object of criticism, he still saw the good in it. Fearless and audacious about pursuing his dreams, he went ahead and simply became what he wanted to be: an editor, emcee, underwear runway model, or dancing go-go boy at Paul Van Dyk’s mammoth gig here.
He once joked to me, laughing off the flak he got, “Well, saan ka naman nakakita ng editor na may dyslexia, who cannot spell or write, emcee na bulol, or dancer na pilay? O di ba?”
With so much empathy and love, JR was always on your side. And when he picked a side, he was on the side of good. “Your good friend was a principled man,” texted Yes and Pep.ph EIC Jo-Ann Maglipon to me when she found out he had died. “I have been an admirer since I interviewed him. It is so rare that I meet someone who will say what he believes to be right, and then when the whole world gangs up on him, will stand his ground. He never threw blame my way. Never said I shouldn’t have interviewed him, even when his own brother, who is also a fine guy, asked him what in the world possessed him to talk! And despite the ostracism later…The guy had class.” In a personal note that Jo Ann wrote to JR, she praised, “You and the personal courage you’ve exhibited, especially in someone who genuinely wants peace and wishes only good are reasons to feel good about the world.”
I called JR my BFF (Boyfriend Forever) and told him that even if I never found The One, I was already perfectly happy to have him as The One, with Rama (his lhasa poodle) as our love child, and living in the same building. And then The One came along in November 2005 (my now-husband Andrej, the second nicest person in the world next to JR). In the days before Andrej would arrive in Boracay to join me for our first trip together at the end of that year, I was already with JR on the island for our annual post-Christmas vacation with the gang, and I noticed that he never left my side, as if he was counting the hours before he would lose me to Andrej forever. He even skipped going out at night (unheard of, right?) when I’d stay in. The night before Andrej arrived, he told me, “I’ll just watch you sleep.”
Of course, he didn’t lose me forever and we remained close, with him as a happy Third Wheel to me and Andrej, whether out to dinner or coffee in our neighborhood, watching our weekly movie at Greenbelt, or watching the next new play or musicals at the RCBC and Solaire Theaters. Naturally, he would, of course, eventually find other BFFs, whom he often talked about with me. In these past few days I’ve seen so many friends coming out with their own similar experiences of how they were touched by having him in their lives, with galleries of photos with JR, calling him “My Forever Date” and “Date ng Bayan.” Among them, his cousin Joanna Suarez, who joked, “Ikaw ang misis, kami ang mga kabit, at dito tayo pinagtagpou-tagpo ni JR.” Of course I bear no jealousy, but I marvel at how much quality time he made for each of us. JR had so much love to give everyone, but in the end, not enough love to give himself.
“Ang daya-daya mo JR!” I want to tell my BFF, who was obsessed with remaining youthful and had recruited me into joining his efforts. “You’ll be forever young, while the rest of us back here will have to age.” And as his friend Mark Bumgarner said to me on Wednesday night, JR was truly the King of the “French Exit” a.k.a., quietly slipping away so as not to raise a fuss or draw any attention to himself, not saying goodbye, nor giving us the chance to say goodbye. Maybe goodbyes just weren’t his style.
Well, what can we do? Just like at the Madonna concert, JR got upgraded ?to the front row, but this time close to the real Madonna up there, if there is one. But back here on earth, the rest of us mortals must Live to Tell the wonderful story of a beautiful man who once walked the earth named JR.
All over FB you’ve called him a “lovely soul,” “the gentlest gentleman,” “sunshine on a rainy day,” “pure love and light,” “a true angel.” Everyone’s wing man can now soar and fly with the other angels. We’re a lucky bunch, all of us who have been blessed with the gift of JR, and we must take that gift and put it inside our hearts so he can live within us forever.
As JR liked to text, “Kitakits!”