Wander Girl

by Tweet Sering

  I even relived, with a strange bittersweet feeling, how Gabe and I got together. We had already been dating for five months when we watched a Mel Gibson movie whose message was: Don’t wait another moment to tell the person you love how you feel. Mel was about to propose to his longtime girlfriend when he suddenly chickened out and stuffed a spoonful of blueberry cheesecake in his mouth instead. The girl walked out of the diner, and as she turned to wave happily at him, he watched in horror as a truck hit her.

  After the movie we went to a dessert place along Katipunan. As we sat across each other at a table, Gabe said if he could ask me something.

  I said sure, what was it? Played dumb.

  Then he swallowed hard, and looked around. “May blueberry cheesecake ba dito?”

  We both laughed and he held both my hands across the table.

  “I love you, Hil,” he said. “I really want you to be my girlfriend.”

  Haay, finally! “I love you, too, Gabe,” I said, smiling and squeezing his hands.

  “Di ko alam kung ba’t ko to pinatagal. Buti na lang talaga we watched Mel Gibson.”

  After dessert (of blueberry cheesecake, to mark the momentous occasion), we joined his friends from the swim team at a nearby bar. When they saw us enter, holding hands, they all cheered and clapped Gabe on the back. “Welcome to the club, pare!”

  A new all-student band, Parokya ni Edgar, was playing on stage.

  “Puno ang langit ng bituin... at kay lamig pa ng hangin...” crooned the scrawny, pre-pubescent-looking lead. In a moment, the rest of the bar, full of students in the Katipunan area, joined in.

  “Wow, these guys are good,” I said to Gabe.

  He grinned, slipped an arm around my waist, clinked the mouth of his beer bottle with mine and swayed the two of us to the music.

  “ ...At sa awitin kong ito, sana’y maibigan mo... isang munting harana para sa ‘yo.”

  The short traipse down Memory Boulevard ended with me wiping tears I didn’t know I had shed during the recollection. Then I moved on to rereading certain pages of some of my beloved teenage books, the best Sweet Dreams titles—Ten Boy Summer, The Great Boy Chase, First Love, Forbidden Love—and the one class-required novel that made me kilig, Pride and Prejudice.

  In the afternoon, I pretended I was the lead in my own music video and emoted to old favorite songs, especially the ones about love lost (“When Love Breaks Down” by Prefab Sprout; Billy Bragg’s “Valentine’s Day Is Over”) all the while marveling at how the Brits have a song for everything, and at the highly literate way they expressed their thoughts in music.

  I dearly missed my tape compilation of, in my book, the best new wave love songs. I had slaved over that tape for days, especially when a music compilation was a much more arduous task then than it is now. Which is probably why it meant more to me now than anything. It may have fallen off my bag in Siargao as Lulu and I rode the habal-habal back to our cottage the afternoon we met the American boys. If there was a time it would greatly serve its purpose, today was that.

  By sundown, when Gang-Gang had come inside the house from an afternoon of talking with the neighbor’s helper while cutting the carabao grass out front and began puttering around the kitchen in preparation for dinner, I already felt healed.

  Two days later, as I stood up from my office desk to photocopy a few passports, I felt a sudden gush. I dropped the passports on the table and hurried past my mom’s desk to the restroom.

  The scene of me in the unisex restroom was straight out of a 1920s silent movie—full of exaggerated actions bordering on the slapstick. And no sound. Never had the sight of blood-stained underwear been greeted with such jubilation. I repeatedly made the sign of the cross, and vowed to make good my promises. I raised triumphant fists in the air and jumped up and down, to the sound of silence.

  “That was hormonal imbalance, which is caused by severe stress and a bad diet,” Helen said when she arrived from Sydney and I told her of my ordeal. “My period skipped a whole month when I was doing that blasted thesis and my partner bailed on me at the last minute. Remember? I thought I wasn’t going to graduate.”

  But whatever it was—hormonal imbalance or a miracle from God—I felt I had been given a new lease on life. I wasn’t going to squander this one again.

  French Rule

  In the aftermath of my pivotal breakup with Gabe, I drew up a five-point action plan and immediately set to work on this new phase of my life, my Renaissance.

  I. Make a list of the things I wanted in a romantic partner.

  This was easy, I thought. And fun! All I had to do was make a comprehensive list of the qualities my dream man should possess.

  One Saturday afternoon, while Hannah and Helen were hanging out at the mall and my parents were at The Bourbon Blues, I sat at my writing desk and began The List.

  Things I Want in a Boyfriend/Husband

  **1. Kind

  **2. Great sense of humor (able to laugh at himself)

  **3. The biggest supporter of my dreams—my own rah rah boy

  **4. Passionate about his work

  5. Sweet and malambing—loves to touch and hold me all the time

  6. Is a little boy at heart—has a child’s innocence and innate trust in the world and mankind

  **7. Highly-tolerant, open-minded

  8. Is sweet to his mother

  9. Well-read

  10. Loves to travel and see the world

  11. Remembers things I say, even ones I’ve already forgotten I’ve said

  12. Someone who always looks after my welfare

  **13. Has a great deal of respect for women

  14. A hopeless romantic

  15. Loves to give me backrubs and footrubs

  **16. Smells good!

  **17. Loves my family and friends

  **18. Fiercely loyal

  19. Someone who dresses well, knows what looks good on him

  **20. Doesn’t smoke

  21. Someone who openly considers me his best friend

  22. Someone who surprises me with nice little meaningful presents

  23. Loves to make love and constantly looks for ways to spice up the sex act

  24. Outdoorsy and athletic

  25. Has wonderful, expressive eyes

  26. Has nice little crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiles

  27. Courageously pursues his dreams

  28. Shares the conviction that the Brits are the world’s best lyricists

  29. Thinks me the smartest, the funniest, and the most intoxicating woman in existence!

  (**Absolutely non-negotiable)

  Now should the above list be deemed too tall an order for any mortal, would-be partners, I can always try to make a second, and considerably shorter, list:

  Things I Want in a Boyfriend/Husband:

  I. John Cusack

  ———Nothing follows———

  II. Find out what I wanted to do with my life.

  How many people I knew were doing what they really wanted and not just slogging along for the money, or to pay off their car loan? How many people I knew had careers they loved so much that they would do it for free?

  “Hi, Tito Johnny,” I called as I pushed open the door to The Bourbon Blues. “Is my dad here?”

  Tito Johnny was my dad’s business partner and old friend from publishing. He and my dad shared a love for jazz, draft beer, and Rolando Navarrete.

  Four beer bottles stood on a table near the door. The two started their drinking early—it was only four o’clock in the afternoon.

  “He just went to the restroom” he said, and offered his cheek for a kiss. He had a folder of papers under his arm. “I was also about to leave. Tell him I’ll be back at eight.”

  I nodded, watched him disappear outside the front door, and sat on the chair he had vacated. In a few minutes my dad came out of the restroom.

  “Uy,” he said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  I told him I asked Mom’s permissio
n to come over for a break because there was something I wanted to ask him. Dad pulled a chair and sat down.

  “Fire away,” he told me.

  “How did you know this is what you wanted to do?” I asked, crossing my legs and leaning towards my subject like a talk show host.

  “Dati pa to, eh” my dad said, as he toyed with his bottle of San Miguel Pale Pilsen on the table. “College pa lang I wanted to play in a jazz band, but I couldn’t afford an upright bass, eh, mahal. That time mga P50,000. Malaki na ‘yun nu’ng panahon na ‘yon. So sabi ko, I’ll save nalang when I start working na. But you can’t pala, eh. Your mom and I got married. So there was rent, electricity, water bills. Sabi ko, sige pa, trahaho pa ako para may extra… But the more I earned the more our necessary expenses—Helen was born, then you. Gatas naman ngayon... diaper, papadoktor. Tapos tuition. Naku, walang tigil “yan.”

  “Is that why you gambled all your retirement savings?” I ventured.

  He looked toward the stage area. “Habulin ka talaga ng hilig mo, eh,” he said in explanation. “Kaya kayo, habang di pa kayo nag-aasawa gawin niyo na gusto niyo.”

  “But how will I know, dad?” I asked. “How will I know what I want to do?”

  “Ano ba hilig mo?” he asked, not breaking eye contact with me as he drank his beer.

  I furrowed my brow, thought hard. Ano nga ba hilig ko?

  Some members of the bar staff were coming in through the front door in their regular clothes. They smiled at me in greeting as they hurried past. I looked across the empty bar, with the chairs atop the tables, light dust particles dancing in the afternoon sunlight that came streaming in through the huge windows.

  “You: may hilig ka ba?’ my dad taunted, finishing his beer and setting it down on the table.

  So that talk didn’t yield instant results, so what? At least, I thought, I would now be on the lookout for my hilig. I’m sure there was at least one in me somewhere.

  Damn. Ano ba hilig ko?

  III. Reconnect with old friends (and make new ones).

  “Hilda? As in Gallares?” came the astounded response on the other end of the line. My call had been transferred from one local number to the next and finally, on the third ring at this particular number, someone had answered.

  When I said, yes, this was she, I was met with a piercing screech.

  “Ohhh my Gaaaad! Nabuhay ka!’

  I was moved at the exuberance of my high school friend and unofficial group party organizer, Lee Sanchez. I forgot it had been two years since I last saw her or any of my other friends. Why did I cut off ties with them again? Oh, yeah, I was a loser. Was, being the operative word.

  We exchanged the usual how-are-you’s and what-are-you-doing-now’s. She was the public relations officer of a five-star hotel in Makati. Then we moved on to everybody else.

  “Still running their cinnamon business,” Lee said of the twins, Felice and Virnice; Stephen had just been promoted to senior account manager at the ad agency; Bunny was still producing commercials; Vince was still a copywriter; Omar was still sales associate but with another telecom company. (“Na-pirate, laban ka! Kaya malaki na sweldo ng lolo mo!”)

  They had moved their hang-out place from Sidebar in Malate to a new bar in Makati called Gweilos, because of its proximity to the offices of the mostly-advertising people in our group. After agreeing to meet with the rest of the group the following Friday, Lee and I said goodbye and I lay the receiver on its cradle with a big smile on my face.

  Meeting old friends has its surprising merits. They remind you of the things you had once found important. For instance, my writing.

  “Remember the articles she wrote for Inquiring Minds?” Virnice said, referring to the pieces I had submitted to the school paper, as she scraped the hot plate for the remaining sisig with her fork. “Weren’t they the funniest?”

  We dubbed Virnice and her twin Felice the Wakefield twins, after the Sweet Valley High teen book series. Which was to say, they were pretty, smart, and popular. Both were members of the girls’ football varsity team and the school choir, were consistent honors students and were always tapped to represent a country in the annual United Nations day celebration at the gym.

  The old group was at an outdoor table at Gweilos. Cars were parked on both sides of the street and what seemed like the whole advertising industry was in attendance—my friends knew practically everyone else. They carried on conversations with people at the next table, and sometimes someone would come to our table to help himself to our pulutan and send a plate of theirs over in return. It was like an after-9 p.m. extension of their offices.

  Lee was right—the place was an 80s music haunt; no sooner had we taken our seats than they played “The Ghost in You” by the Psychedelic Furs. I loved the place already.

  “Why didn’t you work for a newspaper, Hil?” Bunny asked. “Or a magazine? ‘Di ba you took up journ?”

  It was understandable that they should grill me; after all, I had disappeared for almost three years.

  “I don’t know...” I said, looking back to my college days of partying and hanging out and not caring what I was going to do after graduation. “It just didn’t occur to me.”

  Besides, I thought, what was I going to write about? I didn’t know anything. All those articles I wrote for the school paper were just essays on our family travels—how I threw up on the Matterhorn at Disneyland; how Helen threw all our liras into the fountain instead of just a few coins because she had, as she put it, “a whoooole lot of wishes”; how my mom’s belt bag with all our passports in it was stolen in Rome and so we spent the rest of the time at the Philippine Embassy.

  My mom, being a travel agent, gave us access to big discounts on airline fares, accommodations and tours. We traveled during the low season to our place of destination so everything would be much cheaper. I think it was safe to say Helen and I were the most traveled kids in our school.

  It started with the de rigueur grade school class essay: “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” My English teacher had forwarded my essay about Disneyland to the editor-in-chief of the paper and before I knew it, I was a member of the staff. Somehow the position just carried over into high school.

  Yeaaah, I thought as I slowly drank my beer. I did like writing. I recalled my piles of journals, the amount of time I spent writing in them my room, the long letters I sent to Gabe and my friends... Oh. My. God. If this writing thing doesn’t qualify as a hilig, I thought, I don’t know what does.

  Feeling lightheaded, I looked around me with a grin so wide I thought my face would crack. Hey, people! I wanted to announce a la Helen. People, listen up! like writing. Did you hear that? No, no. I love writing.

  My friendship with Bea was new for me. I had always gravitated towards sassy, irrepressible, larger-than-life girls like Helen, Lulu and, I realized, Lee. Bea was a bit more like me—she was the first to laugh at people’s jokes even if they were so laos; she waited for everyone to be in the car before getting in herself; she let others pick their doughnuts in a box before taking the piece nobody wants; she chose her words carefully, so where Helen or Lulu would say, “Ampanget niya ha!” Bea would come up with something like “Umm... I think my type is more Chinito.”

  I had always admired my sister and friends for being able to speak their minds, to call a thing for what it is, and hated my own inability to do so. But the more I hung out with Bea, the less judgmental I became of my traits and inclinations.

  We had coffee dates in different cafés around the Malate area. She told me how their family’s cotton export business had grown bankrupt; how they had lost everything, including their Urdaneta home, to the bank; how she married a man from a wealthy, well-connected family in the hopes that it would give her stability, but he beat her and caused her to suffer miscarriage—twice. She couldn’t tell her parents about what she was going through, thinking they had suffered enough without having to worry about their third daughter. Her sisters in the States sent her money so she could file for
an annulment, which she got last year.

  Her life, I decided the afternoon she told me this, was like a Greek tragedy, worse than Gang-Gang’s telenovelas. And I said I had problems?

  “I can never have children,” she said. “That should make me sad, I suppose, but I’ve been blessed with so many nephews and nieces. And they’re all so cute and adorable! God has been really good to me. I can recall those times without rancor or bitterness, which I expected I would carry for the rest of my life.” She smiled at me over her cup of cafe au lait. “Grace is a beautiful thing.”

  In turn I told her the drama that was my life (much less intense than hers, of course, thank God! I wouldn’t have been able to survive that one). And how I recently rediscovered a passion for writing.

  “I hope you find a job that will allow you to pursue that,” she said. “It’s a gift, you know. I wish I could write. I’ll pray for that.”

  I wanted to say I would pray for her, too, for whatever wishes she held in her heart, but she didn’t seem to need my prayers. Besides, I didn’t know how effective mine were.

  IV. Buy a cellphone.

  It made sense. If I was going to reconnect with friends, who were all strapped to their cellphones and were hardly ever in one place to answer a landline, I had to get myself a unit. I didn’t even bother familiarizing myself with my phone’s other features. So long as I could send and receive text messages and calls, my very basic Nokia with backlights as bright as a stadium’s was just fine.

  V. Take a trip.

  It had been so long since I ventured out of Metro Manila I didn’t know how fresh air smelled like anymore. But since I couldn’t afford a trip abroad or any place that required a plane ride to get to, my choices were limited to the surrounding provinces.

  “How about Sagada?” Lulu suggested.