I’m not expecting anything, she tells me.

During the Christmas break, they’d greet each other a good morning, ask each other what they’d had for lunch, exchange plans for the day, remind each other to eat dinner, and bid each other good night.

*****

Sheila sees a spread of Michelle Bayle on FHM. She is in Starbucks drinking a venti Café Mocha. She bangs her coffee down, splashing some on her perfectly manicured (Revlon, Diamond Sky shade, 180 pesos in PCX) nails. Nakita mo na ‘to, ‘no? she demands angrily of Roger, her boyfriend (3rd year college, class nerd, sometime jock, never met Ms. Bayle) sitting beside her quietly sipping his latte. The magazine is Starbucks’ but Sheila has a feeling Roger has been looking at it while she was buying their coffee. Tinignan mo na ‘to, no? she asks again, pointing an accusing, manicured finger at Michelle in a two-piece, gyrating in the sand.

*****

Early morning. Maui and John lie in bed, sunlight streaming in John’s bedroom. John’s hand is on her head, twisting her hair. Maui’s hand is on John’s chest, lovingly stroking the skin above his heart. One day you’ll meet some girl, and then you’re going to leave me for her, she says.

Where did that come from? John wonders.

Downstairs, the maid cooks corned beef for breakfast, and John’s sisters get ready for school.

*****

Joy tells Richard, I’m tired of always having to be the mature one in this relationship I’m tired of saying sorry. I’m tired. They are in front of the UP Chapel, fighting in public again.

Richard places his arms across his chest, frowns like a child who’s been refused some Chips Ahoy even thought he already has Oreo’s. Fine, have it your way, he mumbles.

We’re going nowhere, Joy thinks.

*****

I love that show, Temptation Island, where the women are women and the men are men. It’s the emotional Garden of Eden. Whoever made that game up is a complete fucking genius. Everyone is stripped bare (literally and figuratively) to their naked self… the men are buff… the women spend all their time in bikinis… but I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway.

This contestant, Valerie, she spoiled her final date, completely ruined it. She spent those last seductive moments in that island paradise crying one moment (because she missed her boyfriend) and throwing tantrums the next (because she imagined her boyfriend having fun on his final date). What a stupid thing to do. I wouldn’t waste my time like that, being miserable. There are better things to think about than your boyfriend cheating on you. Like cheating on your boyfriend.

*****

I promise I’ll never be overbearing again, I tell Boyfriend.

Don’t make promises like that, he says. You’ll always be a woman.

*****

You know that scene in Magnolia where Tom Cruise, in all his long-hair glory, tells the dying Jason Robards, Don’t leave, asshole, don’t leave, and he’s practically spitting on the poor guy but he’s despairing and seething at the same time? Boyfriend looks at me; says Naganyan na ako.

With Carol? I ask.

Yup. Invoking his ex’s name. The ex who dumped him for another guy.

Kamukha niya si JR, I giggle, meaning the long-haired, scrummy-looking Tom. Invoking my ex’s name.

My mother, who is watching with us, looks at my boyfriend. Warily?

Uuuuuyyyy, nami-miss. Boyfriend pokes my ribs.

*****

Dottie has been pining away for TJ for years. Eight years, as a matter of fact, though she will never admit to it. Something about his gait, the way he walked, the way that he sort of looked like a horse, how he looks like when he smokes. After he broke up with his last girlfriend, I tell her, Ayan, libre na si TJ.

So?

Hehehehe.

Hay naku no, walang panahon. She rolls her eyes.

Dottie will make the best girlfriend.

*****

In between writing paragraphs about other people’s lives, when I am at a loss for words or a story, I stick my head between his armpit and breathe in deeply. He smells clean, like laundry soap and body wash and toothpaste. I write on his back, my arm on his bum.

*****

One day Celine has to rush off to class. She leaves half a cup of coffee on her desk beside the PC she’s using. Ryan arrives, feels like having a cup himself. He takes Celine’s half-filled cup, adds additional coffeemilksugar, finishes her coffee.

I know he probably only thinks of me as his friend, she tells me later, after Ryan tells her about finishing the coffee.

*****

Jason writes a letter. I can imagine you as the mother of my children, it says. I see my ideal woman in you. The addressee laughs at what it says, thinks it isn’t true. You’re crazy, she says. You have a girlfriend. Don’t care, Jason says,I love you.

Wonder what he sees in me, addressee thinks, that my boyfriend doesn’t.

*****

The day Evan stopped looking at me wide-eyed, I knew it was over and that we had better leave each other soon before any more damage was done. People do that sometimes: they complain and are not redeemed by their actions. They drag relationships on and on until it gets a life of its own. And it takes its toll on you, it really does. And one day you wake up to survey the ruins and you wonder how something once so ideal and perfect can fall apart like that. Then you realize that there were cracks long before you took the time to notice them.

*****

Senior year, high school. Irene and James have a paper conversation going, sort of like passing around notes, but with only two people. A semi-serious invitation to kiss emerges, something that takes them both by surprise in terms of their own boldness. Suddenly, they are overwhelmed by the possibility of sharing an illicit kiss, something one never tells the boyfriend or girlfriend (Oh, by the way, last night as so-and-so and I were working on that English project, we kissed). It settles in their minds, enters every cranny of their brains; every empty moment that’s what they think about.

And on the night of the great English project sleepover, high on nicotine (another illicit activity) and hormones, they do kiss; tongue groping for teeth, hand grasping hair.

You’re a lousy kisser, James says, out of breath and mouth glistening with saliva.

No, asshole, you are, Irene counters, reaching for him again.

That night James learns to give the perfect kiss.

*****

Am in another one of my dark moods. Talk to JR for something like an hour. Do you miss me? I ask. I think I’ll always miss you, he says. Our eyes meet, our sin touches, I lean on his shoulder (still the shoulder I know best). He drapes his arm over my head, holds my ear, touches it. It is the first time since we broke up that we touch like this. I am scared he will kiss me. I am too sane to let that happen.

The next day he looks at me like I am an acquaintance. My only consolation is this: resisting the urge to kiss him was easier than I thought.

*****

Irene was an insomniac back in high school. She slept at four and woke up at seven to go to school, but she’d sleep again as soon as she got home. She loved the blackness of the night, the depth it promised, the thick nothingness it held.

One day she met a guy who called himself Day. She was tickled pink by the serendipity of it all.

She also loved rainy nights, thunderstorms that arrived while you were asleep, the cold mist of water vapor hanging on the air. She would close her room lights during storms, the flashes of lightning filling her room with momentary light.

One day she met a guy who called himself Rain. Again, the tickled pink thing.

But neither worked out. Talk about fate.

*****

Tell me a story, Marc. I ask a favor from a friend. A story about you and Dahlia.

Bakit? Suspicion.

For my short story.

Bakit? Apprehension.

Ran out of anecdotes. It doesn’t have to be particularly nakakakilig or anything. Just a story about you and Dahlia.

It’s hard to get stories about happy people. They’re always so hesitant to share their happy stories. Something to do, I think, with being considerate around miserable people. But take a guy who’s just been dumped, or a girl whose love is unrequited. A little tweaking and they share their life story. Sometimes it helps to have a couple of bottles of Colt, or maybe a pack of smokes, or both. And they burst open like a dam, like a balloon, like you’ve been watching a play that runs for three hours and you had a large Gulp before entering. Sadness flows out of you. Misery is a diuretic.

*****

The last time I saw Leo was Christmas, Cathy says. Then last Saturday I was home and he was home so we saw each other. And then he preached.

Preached?

Leo, Cathy’s true and ultimate love, is celebrating his first mass next Sunday, over at Father Scopous Charismatic Community Church. He’s off somewhere in the boondocks of Quezon or Batangas or something, helping the poor. He’s not technically a priest like they have in regular churches. He can get married and be horny and stuff. That, in my humble opinion (Catholic schoolgirl upbringing), is hilarious.

Anyway. E pano yun, pano na kayo?

OK lang yun, Cathy says, pari siya, magmamadre ako, gagawa kami ng Holy Family. She laughs out loud, her teeth reflecting the fluorescent lights.

E hindi naman kayo nagkikita e.

E di immaculate conception. She laughs again. This time she covers her mouth demurely with her hanky, but her laugh still resonates in the room.

*****

I have it figured out, Joy says triumphantly. To be an effective girlfriend, you have to think like a man.

Five months after she leaves Richard she meets the perfect guy: Archie. Part heavy smoker, part horny guy, part out-of-this-world, but all-affectionate. They call each other ‘baby’, it makes the rest of us look like buffoons. Archie looks like a Chinese Neanderthal, lower jaw jutting out like a bowl and eyes like slits. Plus horrible teeth, as only the true-blue Chinese have. But he takes care of her. Doesn’t make her cry like Richard did. And she buys him aloe ointment for a festering wound. They sleep wound up in each other’s arms. Alma snores. Archie doesn’t mind. Alma doesn’t ask anything from him. There are no promises. But when they look into each other’s eyes, everyone else is erased from the moment. We think the looks are kind of freaky but of course that’s because we’re not welcome in their world.

*****

Sinagot ako ni Dahlia madaling araw, Marc says. Nag-overnight ako sa UP kasi nasiraan ako ng kotse, nag-overheat. Nasagot niya tuloy ako.

The next day, sinamahan niya ako magpagawa. Pinakain pa ako ng lunch.

There are things that people should be grateful for. Like overheating cars. And long nights making your thesis that make you realize how much you want to take care of other people. And late-night trips to Select Commonwealth to buy Marlboros and iced tea that bring you closer to people who care about you. And as you’re riding his car on the way to Select he plays the first Third Eye Blind CD, and you both sing along to “Narcolepsy”. And it makes you wonder, How perfect is this? Another thought enters: How long will it last?

*****

I can’t help but compare you and Aaron, Maui says, five months after she leaves John for Aaron. And you always come out on top.

You carry around this guilt as long as she’s not happy, I tell John. It eats away at you, it makes you miserable that she’s still not happy without you.

*****

That sadness is a diuretic thing I said earlier? I take it back. I just talked to Fred for an hour and a half, on the story behind him and Elaine. And he wouldn’t stop talking about it, about how they started and how they bonded and the first time they met and how they were talking about marriage. I wonder what changes when two people get serious in a relationship. Everything?

And Boyfriend just broke my heart but I don’t really feel like talking about it much, I just let this sadness settle on my chest like too many packs of cigarettes. Misery exudes out of my pores like day-old curry but I don’t think about it, I don’t dwell on the details. It’s enough that I know what we have to do.

I actually look sadder than I feel. It’s the drama of it that gets to me.

*****

Ayoko lang na nakikita kang nasasaktan.

The problem with you is that you’re too selfless.

To think that a week ago my aunt’s girlfriend had warned me about men who change girlfriends too quickly. He’s not like that, I’d said.

I cannot get myself to get mad at him.

Do you believe me when I say I love him? I ask Marc, his closest friend. Just so you don’t think I played around with him.

Alam ko naman yun, e. Kita ko naman yun. I know it’s not you. But it’s different when you view things from a distance, and when you’re in the middle of it.

How true.

Honestly, I don’t want to lose you, Boyfriend had said.

Bakit may ‘honestly’ pa?

I just wanted to be sincere.

*****

I changed his name in my cellphone. From now on, whenever he texts me or gives me a call, I will be communicating with “ex-ex-ex”.

*****

So what do you think of sleeping with the ex? Sabi ko na nga ba, it’s just the sex, we were both laughing while talking about it. Last night I felt so blah while I lay in his arms. Like I could just turn off a switch and my love for him would go off like a light bulb. I felt invincible. I felt in control. This is the exact opposite of our first time, I’d said. When I had said to him, you think you’re in love with me don’t you and he’d said yes. Now it’s my turn to be in love with him, and his turn to know this but not feel the same.

"Sex with an ex can be depressing. If it's good, you don't have it anymore; if it's bad, you just had sex with an ex." –Samantha (from Sex and the City)

*****

That thing about not noticing the cracks I wrote earlier? This one was a f*cking earthquake. Didn’t see it coming. Everything was ok. And then it struck.

How do you really feel about me?

…I really love your company he said. Shit.

So that’s it. That settles that. That’s all you love, my company.

…I love you pero hindi ako in love na in love sayo. F*ck.

That really hurts. And he had the gall to ask me if I was mad at him. Isn’t it pretty obvious that when you tell someone you’re not really in love with them it sort of hurts?

But this misery is going to pass, I know. This is going to fade. I am ignoring him. We’ve been talking about it for a week and I have nothing left to say. I (the drama queen that I am) have actually run out of words, of feelings. Besides, I know that whatever I say will not change the fact that he still doesn’t know what he wants, or who he wants. And I don’t really feel like talking to him about mundane things, like nothing ever happened between us. We’ve smoked too many cigarettes together; we might as well smoke them apart.

*****

I spent my Sunday afternoon in Greenbelt, watching a Mexican film. Amores Perros is the title; English translation: “Love’s a Bitch”. If you haven’t watched it yet, go NOW and catch it before it disappears. It is an amazing movie. For the three hours you are stuck in that chair, the movie drills it in you again and again: love’s a bitch, ain’t it. And In my 7-day rut, it seems to be the most important lesson of my life.

*****

I hate you, I told him last night as we lay in bed.

How’s your short story going? he asked in reply.

I’m going to put that in.

That you hate me?

Yup.

So you’re the lead character.

No, I’m just the narrator.

And you’re going to put it in that you hate me.

Yup.

How?

I’m going to write it: I hate him.

Will you let me read it?

No.

*****

Maybe you don’t know… my friend Marcial wrote, that one of the reaons why I like stars… is that they give this view or this feeling that something is so far and unreachable. Because sometimes that’s how I look at my problems; that they’re far away and they can’t harm me… that I can just stare at them and all they can do is blink… and eventually they die…

But the sun is a star. And it burns brighter than anything else that we can see. And you feel the heat it generates; it burns you. So I guess it’s all a matter of perspective: sun or star?

*****

Marcial’s girlfriend broke his heart, too. She was always looking for someone better; someone taller and more handsome. But Marcial, despite the constant presence of a nose pimple, sings like a god. And plays the guitar like a demon. I guess it’s true: you always want what you can’t have.

But he’s still there, stuck in his rut, pining away for her. Stupid love, we say at the same time. And in the background, we can almost hear the echo, “Stupid!”

*****

I just don’t see myself marrying Helen, Jason confides to me. I’d like to wake up next to someone happy. Someone who welcomes the day with a smile.

How does she wake up?

Zero patience. Don’t even try to talk to her, mag-aaway lang kayo. Ikaw, masaya ka ba paggising? He grins.

*****

Alam mo kung pano ko na-figure out na may thing ka para kay Ryan? I tease Celine. Ang sungit nung taong yun pero sobrang pasensyoso ka sa kanya. Lahat na lang ng ginagawa niyang pagtataray sa ibang tao pinapalampas mo.

Celine is the most cheerful person I know. And when she gets bitten, she gets bitten hard. But I guess that’s how it is with everyone.

*****

This is my first real heartbreak. And for the first time in my life, I don’t really feel like writing about it. I am at a loss for words. Honestly. It doesn’t ease the pain, doesn’t make me any less miserable. All I know is there is this mind-numbing pain in my belly because I lost him, and I hate him so much because it’s there.

*****

In Richard’s hand his girlfriend wrote 'Christina' in blue marker. Bakit ka may ganyan? I ask. Nilagyan ko siya ng ‘Richard’ sa kamay niya e he replies.

Bakit pentel pen?

Kainis nga e, ballpen lang ginamit ko, ginantihan ako.

Ah, the power of love…

*****

I’ve never been in love, Charlene told me last November. Be sure to tell me when it hits you, I told her.

Kami na, she tells me two months later, about this guy who’s been patiently courting her, bringing her home to Mandaluyong on weekends, knowing Charlene was uncertain about the whole thing, that she didn’t think of herself as the committing kind. ‘Collect and collect’, that was her motto. Until now.

I let out a yell on the way to the Faculty Center where we are going. Shit na-in love din ang gaga!

I just realized he was really important to me. That I wouldn’t know what to do if we graduated and I let him go. I realized I wanted him with me.

*****

I met this girl in Camping class, Peter begins. Something happened while we were on our second trip…

Peter, my high school friend, ends up with his arms wrapped around that girl. In the beach. After a night of doobie and gin. I really like hanging out with her.

What about Kats? His girlfriend of maybe a couple of years.

Siguro cool off muna kami… we don’t get to see each other much anyway…

Idol talaga kita.

May date nga kami mamayang gabi, e. Nagpa-reserve ako ng table.

So anong plano mo?

Ayoko naman siyang gawing girlfriend e. pero tawang-tawa talaga ako sa kanya, nagbukas ng bote ng toma ginamit niya ngipin niya… cowboy talaga yun.

The cowgirls are never anyone’s idea of a girlfriend… they’re just the most fun people to be with… the ones who receive the “I really love your company” compliments. And that really sucks.

You might be in over your head, Peter.

I just really love hanging out with her…

*****

Suddenly I realize that that’s what it’s all about: men are ultimately looking for someone stable, someone they can spend the rest of their lives with (Isn’t everyone? My ex says when I tell him this). That’s the kind of girlfriend they want. And all the other girls they take out on dates and have sex with and go on drinking binges with are almost never those girls. They’re always and forever going to be the greatest companions. But never the wives.

It’s not me. I reply to my ex.

I don’t know. He answers back.

You know this at the back of your mind. You just don’t want to tell me.

I really don’t know.

*****

How am I going to end this? I don’t have a decent closure to give. I wrote this story to accommodate everyone’s love lives. And lost mine in the process. I went into this with the best of intentions. I wanted to be a great girlfriend, someone not so overbearing or demanding or jealous. I wanted to work things out. I wanted to at least try to correct all the mistakes I ever made. But the things that transpired these past two weeks were not of my making, and I am left with the consolation that I did the best I could, that whatever I gave was not lacking. I was the rebound girlfriend, plain and simple. And I can say that with a straight face, without any trace of emotion. Because these things do happen, and it’s no one’s fault really, because you only know the real story when you view it from a distance, and when it occurs in a different lifetime.

But it doesn’t end my quest for the answer to being the effective girlfriend. There will be other boys, and people will have other stories, and to get a line from an Indigo Girls song, “seasons cross and love gets lost and time passed makes it plain”. Everyone has a story, and I tried to squeeze in as many stories as I could. And the surprising thing is, there is always something to learn. I’m betting that next time he (whoever it is) won’t be able to let me go.

But then that’s another lesson I learned. Be optimistic.

So, what’s your story?



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