Lolita

I don’t even have to know what her background is or why she came into my life. What matters most is I have her and she is here to stay. I may neglect her most of the time but I don’t have plans of parting ways with her – never, ever!

Unlike any other people closest to my heart, I value Lolita because she knows how much I can give more than what I can receive. She sees how far I can go more than what I wanted to reach. And she knows when I should stop even if I still wanted to go.

My travel agent introduced me to Lolita when I was arranging my flight for a Thailand tour. With just a week to walk around the beautiful spots of Siam, my travel agent assured me that she would be the best company I could ever have.

And that’s what she exactly did! She made my week as if I stayed there for a month, my walks as if I was one of the locals, and my lonely nights as if I didn’t feel cold. Indeed, she provides what a man needs, even more than what a man wants. She is Lolita. That’s my Lolita.

Every time I am out on a date, Lolita would be on my side always assuring me that I will have that great dinner even if that dinner will be my last with that date. She would be there every time I shop for someone even though that someone would just say thank you and return what I shopped. She would always be there while I wait for that someone never to come, never asking what I look more in a woman that she hasn't have. Foolish that she is but that is Lolita, my Lolita.

But more than a dictator, Lolita ensures that I ride a jeep even if I wanted to have the comfort of an air-conditioned taxi cab. She decides that I mix-and-match rather than buy expensive clothes. I hate her for that, but I love her more also because of that.

Lolita, Lolita. How I wish you know her more.

Lolita, Lolita. How I wish every man has one and enjoy more.

Every one could have a Lolita but you can never have mine. Yours could be better but I would never mind. Lolita could be a headache but she soothes my pain. She causes me heartaches but she pampers me and keeps me sane.

Lolita, Lolita. I don’t care where she comes from but I wish you know her more. Lolita, Lolita, I wish everyone has a Lolita - MY WALLET - so that we can enjoy more.

Two

The numer two has played a significant role in my life. In addition to what regularly comes in twos, I have two gadgets for seeing - my eyeglasses and my contact lenses; I lost two molars because I ate twoooooo many candies; and my appetite, definitely enough for two.

Two, two, two - allow me to tell you why two.

I was two-times-three years old when I learned that my parents just wanted to have two kids. That information made me proud because I know I am kid number two...or so I thought.

From gossipping yayas, I learned that my parents actually had another baby but lost it when two rats lept at my Mom causing her to have a misscarriage. So that made me kid number three! But hey, thanks to the two rats now I am kid number two.

When I was in college I had to take a major subject twice because I was busy being president of two organizations. I became so busy that I forgot that I should maintain a grade of "2".

I took the CPA board exams twice because I was busy preparing for a trip to Hong Kong without my parents knowing it. I was even scolded by a parent of a classmate of mine because his kid ended up two places lower in the top 20 than what they expected. When I took the CIA exams the first time, I passed two of the hardest subjects but failed on the easiest one. So when I took the exam again, I know I’m going to pass because that was already my take two.

Two, two, two – tell me why does it have to be two? Two, two, two – why does it have to be me and not you!

Speeches are best if our points are in threes. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are the famous trinity. I could have gotten honors had I taken everything once; I could have landed a high paying job if I didn’t think two by two and decided at once.

But Jesus was so kind in telling me why – why it has to be two and not happen to you.

He told me that my parents were not matured yet at that time and were not ready with the first baby. He instead gave me so they’ll be worry-free.

He told me to stay for another year in college so I can be with my father who suffered a stroke and was confined to the hospital for almost three months. He gave me the organizations so I won’t blame my failures to my father.

I had to take the CPA exams twice so I can spend some time in helping a friend put up a business. And the CIA, for rejecting a job offer in chaotic Beijing.

Two, two, two – now I know why it has to be two. Two, two, two – now I know why it has to be me and not you.

I asked a question and He answered me well. He gave me a number that made me well.

I am two, I am two – tell me what number are you?

Beyond Forgetting

In our toastmasters meeting last Thursday, April 20, I was surprised to hear myself promoting Philippine literature to my audience. I don 't know if it was because of the Story Philippine Magazine I got hold of the week before or was it because the Palanca Awards season officially opened or maybe because I was reading Lakambini Sitoy's Mens Rea, a collection of her great short stories. Never a good salesman, I felt I made my first million dollar sale when I caught everyone's attention on the topic.

The following day, Marjo, a very good friend from Toast of Mensa, shared with me the poem she loved most. Beyond Forgetting was written by Rolando Carbonell, one of the gurus in Philippine love poetry, who happens to be Marjo's friend.

Dr. Carbonell had a colorful love affair, has 14 children but has only one love - Tita Duran...to whom this poem was dedicated to.


Beyond Forgetting
Rolando A. Carbonell

For a moment I thought I could forget you.

For a moment I thought I could still the restlessness in my heart. I thought the past could no longer haunt me-nor hurt me.

How wrong I was!

For the past, no matter how distant is as much a part of me as life itself. And you are part of that life. You are so much a part of me-of my dreams, my early hopes, my youth and my ambitions-that in all my tasks I can’t help remembering you. Many little delights and things remind me of you.

Yes, I came. And would my pride mock my real feelings? Would the love song, the sweet and lovely smile on your face, be lost among the deepening shadows?

I have wanted to be alone.

I thought I could make myself forget you in silence and in song . . .

And yet I remembered. For who could forget the memory of the once lovely, the once beautiful, the once happy world such as ours?

I came because the song that I kept through the years I waiting to be sung. I cannot sing it without you. The song when sung lone will lose the essence of its tune, because you and I had been one.

I have wanted this misery to end, because it is part of my restlessness.

Can’t you understand? Can’t you divine the depth and the tenderness of my feelings towards you? Yes, can’t you see how I suffer in this even darkness without you?

You went away because you mistook my silence for indifference. But silence, my dear, is the language of my heart. For how could I essay the intensity of my love when silence speaks a more eloquent tone? But, perhaps you didn’t understand

Remember, I came, because the gnawing loneliness is there and will not be lost until the music is sung, until the poem is heard, until the silence is understood . . . until you come to me again.

For you alone can blend music and memory into one consuming ecstasy. You alone . . .

Why I Won't Have Sex With You

In celebration of International Womyn's Day, allow me to share with you two poems which I think best describe the split identity of the Filipino womyn of today. Mesdames, which one are you?

Why I Won't Have Sex With You (Lilledeshan Bose; Uniberso, New Poets Calling)

If you really want to know, it’s because my thighs are too big. They slump across the bed, too heavy to move apart, but slightly, at the knees. Waves of cellulite lolling across seas and seas of undesired flesh. Mapped out by white webs of stretch marks, this wide expanse spills out of your grip, easily. I doubt if you would want to graze your fingers across a bedimpled, blotchy crack. I have trouble lifting my legs up for the perfect position (around your neck, perhaps, or my left knee hugged to my chest) because of this unwieldy weight, and I am so afraid to disappoint you. How your sweat drips down your brow in this great effort to get me to take my pants off. I try to distract you by sitting up, but my stomach rolls forward too fast and loose, to my dismay. I lie back down thinking, sex belongs to skinny people: the stick figures with melon boobs I know you fantasize about. I try not to bite my lip as you go down on me: I fail to keep a moan that half-arcs across this dark and sad motel room. I feel too big for the bed, too ugly for these mirrors, unworthy of this pleasure that I feel. I want to envelope your body with mine, enclose your being, but I fear losing you. I am too thick and oily: what if you suffocate within my folded flesh?



Why I Won’t Have Sex With You After Lilledeshan Bose's poem
(Dinah Rose Baseleres-Ladia)

If you really want to know, it’s because my thighs aren’t too big. They are smooth and creamy against the sheets, so smooth you are driven to madness imagining your cum splattered on them. You have never run your fingers across such brown smoothness, have you? The perfect swell of hip narrowing down to that perfect stretch of leg. I imagine your hands lifting my legs up for the perfect position (around your neck, perhaps, or my left knee hugged to my chest) and bile rises up my throat. I am afraid the sight of you will disappoint me: how your sweat drips from your brow, your chest heaving on top of mine. I try to distract you by cocking a loaded gun before you can cock yours (tiny little thing, sorry), but you fail to grasp the subtlety of homicide, intoxicated as you are by the sight of my naked breasts. I lie back down thinking, “When is this fucker going to stop?” I bite back profanity when you utter words that sound sacrilegious coming from you. Tiny thing that I am, I feel too big for your bed that is devoid of love. You are unworthy of the pleasure you want to feel and thus will never thrust yourself deep into my dark wetness, never feel yourself enclosed in my being, because you are thick and oily with the immensity of your arrogance. I know to you a blowjob from me will equal me loving you. And forgive me, but that is why I won’t have sex with you.

THE SEVENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY

Happy birthday!

After the first, my family considers the seventh birthday very important because to us this is the time when the child will be old enough to remember the fun of having a birthday party. As my Mom would have it, the first six birthday parties are actually for grownups because kids can’t have a bite of the lechon yet. Well I think she’s right because I don’t think anyone will ever remember what he/she ate during his/her first birthday party (that is if you were given something!) or what games he/she played in his/her third birthday party?

But when you’re seven, everything is like a wonderful surprise you always want to happen again and again and again; everything is so vivid and clear in your mind. And should you forget the important events that happened on that day at least you have your seven-year old visitors to help you remember.


Tamar, my nephew, will have his share of a grand seventh birthday party. Since I was tasked to prepare for the big event, everybody is expecting to see something different, something spectacular and extra ordinary. Known for giving surprises, my family will not discount the possibility that the cake will be tamarind-flavored, the games a combination of fresh eggs, water and paint and the decorations a splash of never-seen-before colors. The grandiose plans are all written in my journal and no one will ever know what these plans are - not even Tamar - not until his birthday comes.

Tamar will be seven, oh yes! And I’m already out of wits just thinking what other special things I need to put in to make it even more than just the best.

...But Tamar will never get to eat his tamarind-flavored birthday cake nor blow his special seven candles. He will never celebrate his seventh birthday. In fact, he will not celebrate even a first.

Just six months after she delivered Xenia, my sister learned that she’s pregnant again. Worried that her womb might not be strong enough to carry another baby, her doctors offered clinical abortion as an option. But she never considered this because she is more than just eager to see another wonder spring to life.

But the worries eventually came. I was reviewing for my CPA exams then when front desk told me to run to the hospital where my sister was rushed. Groggy and tired from sleepless nights of studying, I got alerted when I learned that my brother-in-law was still hours away and that I have to be in the operating room to witness the procedures that the doctors were going to perform.

In the operating room, I saw how doctors did all they could and were just seconds away from snatching the baby out of Joe Black’s hands when my sister felt what she described as a sound of a snapping rubber band. Exhausted and tired, my sister and I saw Tamar - a very handsome boy – raised and spanked only to be declared stillborn.

All these happened right in front of me. I, young and innocent at that time, witnessed how doctors became humans, hope turned to despair and what could have been a colorful life turned out to be a cold, lifeless body.

My family helped my sister coped up with the tragedy not knowing that I too was in trauma of the experience. In silence I transferred all the pain I felt into one journal. A journal containing all my plans for Tamar’s first, second until his seventh birthday. Every year I never miss adding something in that journal always thinking that it will be a grandiose day full of love, full of life, full of hope.

March 26, 2005 – that could have been Tamar’s seventh, when he will have his first bite of the lechon and remember its taste forever. Everyday in my life I know that I will never forget the time Tamar lived in this world, even if it was just for six months inside the warmth of my sister’s womb.

Yes, it’s been seven years but that will be the last time that I will prepare for his party. The last because I realized that birthdays should not just be planned and hidden in a lifeless journal waiting to be celebrated, wanting to be expressed and shared with. It was the last because I have lots of other birthdays to prepare – my parents, my cousins - loved-ones I totally disregarded all these years, including myself.

But above all these, last year was certainly the last simply because Tamar’s brother will be celebrating his first.

And that - to me - is more important.

Love Lost On a Moonbeam

Where do you live?
I live between two sun rays
Where showers of gold flirts with life
It's to the west of the biggest rain drop
Where thunder and lightning stop to collide

I am under the spectrum of a rainbow
Where peace prances with dark clouds
I see hatred french-kiss with love
That garbles the vision of the fog

My love lives four ripples away
Where peace prances with dark clouds
Where hatred french-kiss with love
That garbles the vision of the fog

Where thunder and lightning stop to collide
To the west of the biggest rain drop
In there showers of gold flirts with life
My love is home between two moonbeams

On the highway of dawn and dusk
I trod to look for my love
I don't care if I melt on sun's shine
To find the place of my love

Where is my love
Somebody tell me where moonbeam is on a sun ray...