else it was reverieEveryday I find myself convincing the more uninformed half of me that I have not gone wrong, that I am stubborn in emerging stronger and better than what or who I ever was.
But every single day, there is nothing but the birth of a thousand unanswered questions, an endless lust for what has been, succeeding waves of emptiness.
What have I become?
”Bros before hoes, right? Not matter how mad she made me, Robin’s still my bro. And if you make her happy, then that makes me happy.”
And because I can relate to it so much more than I allow myself to, I will not forget.
Stinson, if you were real, I’d high five the living shit out of you.
In the absence of rest I look to the wind bearing speeches of your hands against my body. With you I know no exhaustion, no turmoil, no sadness.
This is how my Valentine’s Day is going for me, and it will be like this until the next day.
I’m not complaining of not having any actual Valentine’s Day-related plans (it’s just a frikking day that I think bored and lifeless people make a colossal fuss out of), but I do wish I had food while undergoing this torment.
Even my own mother doubts my conviction by insisting that one day, I will go home with the news of her unplanned grandchild ready to erupt from in between my legs in months. She seems to have come to believe in the omnipresence and inevitability of sex in today’s seemingly desire-driven world, something that has prompted the whole world to think of virgins as unicorns: rare and ridiculous to the point of non-existence.
People do not normally doubt the integrity of my hymen because I’m too adorable to ever be questioned on the subject of sex and sensuality, and I am proud of that because the thing is, I do hide nothing. This, however, has not prevented me from articulating why I want to stay a unicorn instead of evolving into some reasonably magnificent Andalusian horse or something (this is where I say that non-virgins share the same “horse-ness” with unicorns albeit the apparent difference in number, and are not necessarily demeaned by their non-virginity, unless “horse” is actually, “whores,” of course), and here is why:
Sex is painful.
Science and a few experienced friends have informed me that a girl’s first time is excruciating, and I don’t need to do it to be convinced. The very words entailed in having sex for the first time sound painful (and not to mention, evocative of war): penetration, destruction (of the girl’s hymen), and bloodshed. Despite my supernatural faculty for emotional pain, I detest physical hurts in any form or shape (even needle pricks overwhelm me), and so sex is not something I’m exactly rushing to experience, no matter its “subsequent rewards.”
Sex is dirty.
And I do not mean the “dirty” in “Dirty Dancing.” Sex is filthy: bodies collide and rub against each other, acrobatics and physical pyrotechnics ensue, and stuff come out from weird places. The number of showers and cleansing rituals performed prior to the act of sexual intercourse is irrelevant. If the thought of my mother poking my ear canal with a clean cotton bud is absurd, then nothing would compare to my indignation towards the idea of someone else’s very foreign, very unsanitary, and very un-cotton bud-like entity making its way inside the most private of my being.
Sex makes girls look different.
Uglier, to be exact. People have used words like “tigang,” (barren) “tuyot,” (dry) “nagalaw,” (touched) and “mukhang tumanda” (looking old) to pertain to girls whose hymens no longer exist, and the involuntarily offensive remark “mukha na siyang hindi virgin” always signifies an unpleasant (and disgraceful) transformation of the human physique and aura. I personally take intense pride in not looking “tuyot” and in not attracting articulations of the “hindi ka na mukhang virgin” persuasion. I am aware of my profound cuteness and I have no intentions of changing that.
I do not plan to have any kids.
The idea of bearing and raising children scare the living daylight out of me and its possibility is, sadly but truthfully speaking, not something I can entertain at this point in my I’m-currently-taking-my-Masters-and-I-plan-to-pursue-another-one-abroad-and-hell-I-want-to-live-freely life. I do not want to become a mother just yet. Though it might be antediluvian of me to still be making the connection between sex and childbearing in the time of so many ridiculously effective birth control methods, this fact stands: sex is the gateway to bringing more people to the world. I am not one to do something which essentially promises so much of what I do not wish.
I’m demanding.
I am known to be of immense awkwardness, and to the dismay of my future better half, I do not think my performance in bed will reflect otherwise. Come the time of reckoning, I will, regrettably, not turn into a sultry temptress with the appetite of a deprived lioness. I cannot and will not deliver “practice enhancing” techniques and pleasurable moves of earthshaking proportions. If anything, my already disgraceful motor skills will be made viciously useless, giving my partner every reason for regretting having anything to do with me, and with that, doing me.
The person I will have sex with someday would know this all, and would not only accept but take pleasure from the very unpleasing reality of my failure to please. He would know that during our first time, we would be clumsily pawing our way around each other, laughing ourselves silly in the process and exclaiming, “What are we doing?!” When the horrible bed-bouncing ordeal is finally over, he’d have the guts and the foolishness to believe that he enjoyed the experience with me and would see himself undergoing this torment for as long as he shall exist. The person I will have sex with, therefore, would be stupid, and this stupid person is the only one I’d ever want to have sex with for the rest of my life.
I want to make love.
The act of sex is more than the friction of groins. It’s about becoming vulnerable and making an offering of that vulnerability to another person. It is surrender, an affirmation that the person has captured you mind, body and heart. To have sex is to articulate a love — and not lust — that possesses and is possessed. I believe that it is with this that the human act of sexual intercourse is made entirely different from those of dogs, monkeys, or rabbits. Animals, with their instincts, have sex. We, with what should be beyond heightened urgencies of our flesh, make love.
I choose the latter because it’s only with love that I can ever find myself able to penetrate through and destroy my fears of pain, filth, appearing different, and a future I know nothing about. It’s only with love that I can be of strength and courage, not only for sex but more importantly, for the things which sex is only a prelude to.
Besides, I am meant for nothing less.
That is not to say that I want to die a unicorn; I don’t, but I don’t mind taking all the time in the world. I have so many things I want to do before I can decide whether I’m ready for the “fun” and “delight” that sex brings, like bask in the joy of earning a Master of Arts degree, going to Disneyland, treating my nephew to a live Ateneo-La Salle game, getting married, and eating expensive pizza.
I choose to wait because I am worth it, so sex better do as well. The perfect moment will get there and when it does, it will happen so naturally and so blissfully that there will be no room for dread and second thoughts. This is the sex I know I will one day be strong enough for; after all, true love is not for the weak and faint of heart.
Honestly, there is so much beauty in the waiting. I can only imagine the glory that would arrive with the coming.
1. Invite a tiger for a weekend, according to Jose Garcia Villa.
2. The city screams beleaguerment. Leave.
3. God is in spirits trying to be profanely good and true in a world so politely crass and disgusting.
4. In a world which succeeds in desperately trying to burn, you have the freedom to set yourself on fire.
5. Never abandon.
6. You are capable of vision. Embark on a journey for yours.
7. Human beings are given the freedom to reject compulsions. Artists, however, transform it. You are both.
8. Embrace your compulsions, but choose the ones giving into. The bizarre ones are not necessarily bad. Discern.
9. Educate yourself.
10. Inception, not just expulsion.
11. That estuary of consciousness and slumber is the only intoxication you need.
12. Everything is a story.
With the mountain range of required theories, novels, poems, and deliverables for my two graduate classes and the rapidly diminishing amount of time I am left with to deal with it all, I find myself cooped up in bed at 4:00 in the afternoon, pouring my eyes all over this book I had just picked out at random in the library by an author I had fallen in love with in college.
The loveliest (and this is not sarcasm) thing to be discerned from this all is that at the end of one book after the other, I emerge as neither more brilliant nor even more capable of surviving the drudgery of a materially-driven life. It does to me two things and two things only: inform me of this asymptotic relationship between life and literature, daring me to search for it even in the most “un-literary” of places, moments, and situations; and ignite in me ever more passionately the fire of wanting to burn with worlds and words.
I know that this might not always hold sensible in this life, but today is solely mine.
“Do you like to read? So do I. It will make you blind, but that’s the price one must pay for so much pleasure.” - Eric Gamalinda, My Sad Republic
Ang[]laki[]ng[]problema[]ko.
(My problem is big.)
Ang[]laking[]problema[]ko.
(I am a big problem.)
Fascinating.
It tends to confine us to the boundaries of our ephemeral urges and shun us to the realm of our compulsions, and worst, it allows us to settle for our limited and limiting knowledge of ourselves. It deprives us of the truth that we are meant for so much greater, and the actual chances of living this.
The absence of love hardly ever gives us any reason to be.
1. Me
