Chewing the Fat

A MID-life crisis isn’t necessarily bad.
After all, for every successful forty-year old male who buys a brand-new sports car to ease the effects of middle-age, one car company remains in business, employing thousands who, in turn, provide their families with basic necessities such as food, clothing, and Apple iPhones.
Thanks to moneyed male executives stricken with mid-life crises, many people are able to use, own, and show off their iPhones to their poor, socially-inferior, iPhone-deprived friends. As a result, iPhone people lead infinitely happier, more productive lives, especially compared to those stuck with their low-end, monochrome, single-band Nokias which can’t get a decent signal inside a bus during a rainy night.
Moreover, unlike teenage angst—which is usually shallow, immature, and downright tedious, just like teenagers—the eventual occurrence of a mid-life crisis reflects a significant yet subtle shift in the way people view their achievements, however few and irrelevant.
Take that bronze medal for spelling that you got during the third grade.
By no means is it a cosmic indication that you were destined to become a hotshot editor-in-chief of a national newspaper.
However, the medal—and the small, temporary glory you and your parents got from it—neither cramped your style as a clerk.
After toiling behind a desk for two decades, you begin to realize that the world—including the company which pays your salary—needs paper pushers just like yourself.
Casting off all ambition to become rich and famous by refusing to marry your boss’s fat and ugly daughter, the forty-something clerk with a mid-life crisis discovers a newfound drive to continue working, assiduously keeping track of invoices, vouchers, and memos before the stupid janitor throws them all away.
Having acquired a certain level of maturity about their professional and personal capabilities, individuals on the brink of a mid-life crisis are generally able to take stock of their dreary, empty, and pathetic existence.
In so doing, a mid-life crisis enables everyone to look back at their lofty goals when they were younger and remind themselves their dreams are still within reach only if they win the lotto.
Indeed, there’s nothing like a mid-life crisis to encourage sufferers from turning into replicas of their parents, also known as moody old farts given to sulking whenever their children fail to drop by during the weekend.
Which is why anytime is a good time for a mid-life crisis, especially for people who have yet to have them. So the question now is: why wait for middle age?

DESPITE differences in age, class, race, and underwear, modern males everywhere pretty much share traditions and activities unique to their gender.
Besides being invariably predisposed to indiscriminate spitting and tasteless nose-picking (especially in public), most men at some point in their lives are required to choose, purchase, and wear formal dinner jackets.
Unfortunately, of the many useless talents I currently have at my disposal, none pertain to fashion, let alone anything vaguely relating to choosing and wearing formal outfits.
After all, since I will never be invited to parties organized by Manila’s well-connected impresarios—none of whom have the rare privilege of my acquaintance—I have chosen to believe that formal fashion apparel is merely a small and artificial aspect of human life.
An invention of the style police, fashion is a form of tyranny to which every teenager—male or female, gay or lesbian—have willingly succumbed, just ask Kuya Germs or Brother Mike Velarde.
However, a recent event has recently disabused me of this notion.
Not only did it make my attendance mandatory, formal clothing was also required, thereby forcing me to capitulate lest I lose my young, pretty, and talented wife to her coterie of male admirers.
So the minute C. received the invitation for a formal sit-down dinner with artists and intellectuals, she and I rushed off to the nearest department store and got myself the cheapest formal-looking dinner jacket that our small income could afford.
Despite its price, the blazer—a dark and handsome two-button affair—brought about my significant social transformation.
Previously a half-assed drunken bum with a crass sense of humor, I—with the jacket on—suddenly looked like I was a sophisticated, witty, and charming member of the Philippine intelligentsia, knowledgeable in the fields of industry and the arts.
But the delusion was short-lived.
The minute I tried the jacket on at home and took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror, I knew, without a doubt, that it was the wrong fit.
Although it was warm and comfortable, the jacket was one size larger, no thanks to shoulder pads the size of bread loaves.
In short, the jacket was the latest—and perhaps the most expensive—sartorial mistake I have ever made ever since I became obsessed with a pair of rubber-soled, tan-colored, faux leather shoes that looked fabulous while I was wearing it inside the store.
Which is why as soon as that dinner is over, I am going to have the jacket repaired. Failing that, I’ll probably even consider selling it. Used clothes, anyone?

FOREIGN travel is overrated.
Especially if you are unfortunate enough to use a Philippine passport, considered by many immigration authorities around the world as a license to commit random acts of terrorism, crack bombing jokes at airports, and carry excess baggage.
And if you happen to possess a very limited travel budget—which, to many Filipinos, is the only kind of budget available—the difficulties posed by leaving the country can be limitless.
For instance, a delayed flight connection anywhere outside the country can mean spending a night or two at an airport bench since paying for a hotel room can severely compromise your finances.
However, of the many inherent dangers facing Filipinos traveling abroad, none is more insufferable than encountering their fellow countrymen who live abroad, legally or otherwise. Always secure in their superiority over those who have chosen or have been fated to stay in the Philippines, these immigrants eschew their heritage as long as any Filipino—or any member of a dark-skinned race for that matter—is within a two-kilometer radius.
But whenever slighted for some injury, usually imagined and/or exaggerated, they are the first to cry discrimination, always demanding special treatment since they belong to a minority.
This explains why Filipinos such as myself, given the choice, prefer to stay at home.
Besides severely reducing the chances of meeting these kinds of people, I am not required to secure a visa for lounging in bed, even for prolonged periods. Nor will I need a passport to wear overused, underwashed boxer shorts raring to begin to its next life as a rag.
Unfortunately, despite being a self-confessed, stay-at-home, armchair adventurer, I have managed to visit to a number of countries, thanks to the generosity of my superiors and the heroic efforts of my wife.
Owing to her accomplishments, my spouse has been invited to many programs in the US, Asia, and most recently in Europe, where she was given a month-long fellowship to focus on her work while staying in an Italian villa. As it happens, the Italian grant covers board and lodging not only for the grantee but also for her spouse (also known as that lucky bastard whom she agreed to marry for reasons heretofore mysterious to many people).
So while I am enjoying the cool Italian weather, I am nevertheless looking forward to going back to Manila, home of my set of tattered boxer shorts.

VERY few straight men find amusement in encountering another living, breathing male who happens to be completely naked.
Whatever the circumstances—cinematic, theatrical, sociological, social, personal, and worst of all, sexual—no straight male in his right mind, no matter how liberal, has relished the idea of being in close proximity to a man in his birthday suit.
Although always delighted by the sight of young and pretty females— especially those who show off more skin than usual—many men remain uncomfortable when confronted by a fellow male who has chosen to trump your garden-variety tabloid centerfold by displaying his willy willy-nilly.
This unfortunately pretty much describes my recent experience at the low-end gym I patronize.
While performing the second set of my elevated leg raises—an exercise which I am forced to do inside the men’s locker room—a fellow gym buff sideled up to my right, took a deep breath, and took all his clothes off, underwear included.
He then scoured his bag for a towel which he, perhaps by force of habit, proceeded to sling over his shoulder, oblivious to the fact that his crown jewels were within the visual range of everyone, including obviously myself.
Despite the easy accessibility of his package, I—with my unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality, to borrow a Seinfeld phrase—was not particularly interested in inspecting his specifications.
After all, everyone in the locker room possessed essentially the same biological configurations except that he couldn’t—and wouldn’t be able to—examine ours in the same way we could his (that is, if ever we intended to do so, whether individually or as a group).
And so, like all males pretending to be sophisticated enough for this sort of thing, I closed my eyes, praying that by the time I opened them the surreal penile apparition would either be restrained by cotton underwear, covered by a towel, or for lack of other options, relocated somewhere private, free to roam around without causing injury to anyone or anything and/or sustain any damages.
Unfortunately, this proved to be complicated.
Halfway through my exercises—with my eyes looking straight up—the subject in question emerged from the shower room, still unaware that slick willy resulted in everyone else’s discomfort.
As a result, I lost count of my leg raises, ruining the beginnings of a great workout, no thanks to a man in a birthday suit.

YES, because if things go as planned, my mother-in-law will soon wake up in a city that never sleeps, a city whose theme song was popularized by a New Jersey native, a city which, according to jazz vocalist Carmen McRae, is so nice they named it twice—what else but New York, New York?
Although Mama Tells didn’t exactly want to be a part of it, free roundtrip airfare plus a small allowance—courtesy of a close college buddy—eventually convinced her to leave the confines of a Manila suburb and visit one of the truly cosmopolitan cities in the whole world.
Fortunately, her US visa application didn’t get in the way of her travel plans: she secured a ten-year, multiple entry visa faster than a New York minute.
Which explains why her daughter and son-in-law are very excited about her month-long trip beginning middle of October.
Having visited the city more than once, my wife and I pretty much have an idea of what lies in wait for our mother, an active sexagenarian so youthful she is often mistaken for my father-in-law’s second wife.
And I’m not just saying that because I need to get on her good side. After all, I did ask her to get me some remaindered books and a coffee mug from Strand. Supposedly the world’s largest used bookstore, the legendary establishment is fortunately located just a block down from the Manhattan apartment where she’ll be staying.
However, the used bookstore—with its cramped shelves and uneven heating—may not exactly be the tour expected by a homemaker from Manila.
If only to get a feel of what the city has traditionally offered its first-time visitors, she should ride an elevator to the top floor of the Empire State building, walk down Fifth Avenue, and have her picture taken at Times Square, a place considered by New Yorkers as the center of the universe.
While moving about in the city, especially in Manhattan, she is well-advised to wear a dark coat—perhaps the only thing that New Yorkers have unanimously agreed upon to put on during winter—so as not to distinguish herself as a tourist.
Not that it’s a crime to wear anything else.
Except that no one really wants to be mistaken for an unsophisticated yahoo from Manila while walking down the street in a sea of black, an experience which I am not exactly unfamiliar with.
But whether or not she complies with this odd and unwritten sartorial code, my mother-in-law—at least for once in her life—will understand and appreciate why even non-New Yorkers love New York.

AS DOMESTICATED animal companions, cats require very little attention, especially when compared to a few socially-inept, self-absorbed, and sorry-ass bums I have unfortunately encountered these past few months.
Besides daily feeding, felines only need annual rabies shots, the occasional bath, and regular cleaning of their litter boxes.
Which is not the case at all with other supposedly sentient but nevertheless irritating human beings.
Unlike regular, well-adjusted felines, these vexing, intolerable entities demand more than just food and shelter but also inordinate amounts of patience and sympathy than what is generally provided for under the law and the Geneva convention.
As a result, these so-called “people” deplete my goodwill and reduce whatever is left of my Christian charity.
No wonder many individuals—myself included—prefer felines over their fellow human beings, given half the chance.
Take the overweight grey and white cat we keep at our apartment.
Although aloof, independent, and sometimes even insensitive by nature, the five-year old cat we adopted five years ago only becomes demanding and noisy when he runs out of dry food.
However, once his bowl is refilled—done twice a day at the maximum—he is a bother to no one, preferring to pursue his worry-free indoor existence under the bed, on the stairs, in the bathroom, or ensconced inside a special square basin in our bedroom.
Originally a stray cat living off the cold, inhospitable streets of Western Pennsylvania, our British shorthair cat is now living the life of luxury, although in another country with only one timezone, two seasons, and limited choices for wet cat food.
But during the past month, his charmed life was sorely interrupted.
Since his skin had developed a fungus, he had to be given a bath twice a week using a special shampoo. It was an experience that my cat and I rarely looked forward to.
Given felines’ legendary aversion to water, our cat struggled to escape from the bathroom while I did my best to keep him in it.
Despite this discomfort, I don’t think he’s ever going to complain, especially now that his skin condition is improving.
With my wife and I always at his disposal and a loving vet on call 24/7, the cat previously known as Alex is, without a doubt, living it up.
Although he appears to miss his scratching post, he nevertheless manages to stretch his limbs using our chaise lounge upstairs and our couch downstairs, ruining our precious and not exactly inexpensive furniture.
But then again, that is the price we pay for keeping a cat inside our apartment and ensuring that the rats are kept out. Bet you can’t do that with a bum.

AMONG the three types of office workers—those who work hard, those who play hard, and those who filch paperclips—very few pay attention to office furniture.
Which is expected.
After all, the first are too busy to waste their precious time thinking about them, the second are preoccupied with watching the clock, while the third are always keeping their eyes peeled for the latest delivery of office supplies.
Since I am an underemployed, self-proclaimed comedian masquerading as a mid-level pencil pusher by day, I naturally fall under the second category.
However, unlike those who forget about the job the minute the clock strikes five, I nevertheless care deeply and profoundly about one aspect of my day job: my chair.
Yes, ladies and lesbians, gays and gentlemen, just about the only thing that keeps me from quitting my job and strangling a few of my co-workers is a chair, a device, usually mechanical, which filters noxious gases emanating from your posterior once you sit on it.
Besides helping me endure more than my fair share of boring meetings, the current chair that I use—which is fitted with wheels—also assists me in zipping in and out of my cubicle, useful whenever evading superiors bearing nothing but bad news, additional work, and the latest memo from HR.
Although the chair itself is nothing special—just the standard issue found in corporate Makati sweatshops—mine features an expansive backrest, allowing me to lean further backwards without thinking about chiropractors.
And once my feet is up on my desk, no office-related emergency can ever faze me.
Employees may call a strike, management may decide to shutter operations, and the office may catch fire but if I’m sitting on that chair, I feel like a true-blue professional, someone who renders productive work eight hours a day for five days a week.
Unfortunately, for the past workweek, I have been denied of my right to pretend to work and possibly reduce the company’s productivity. This is because my chair—the same one I had been using for the past three months—has disappeared.
Since I have been forced to settle with a lesser chair—one with a shorter backrest—the loss has deprived me of my afternoon naps, a privilege perhaps now enjoyed by the person who appropriated my chair.
Although I have already issued verbal complaints about this incident, management so far has not taken any action. If this continues for the next month or so, I may either have to request a new chair or get myself a new job.

NOTHING is more discouraging to a fully-grown, mature, healthy Filipino male than to discover that he has run out of beer buddies on a Saturday night. Always unexpected but very difficult to accept—like athlete’s foot, corny jokes, and middle-age—the sheer absence of friends to share a drink (or two) with especially during weekends is a form of torture tantamount to the election liquor ban.
Unfortunately, this was exactly the kind of suffering I almost had to endure a few weeks ago, when the specter of a sober Saturday loomed large on the horizon.
The day began innocuously enough, never giving any indication that I would run dry of beer buddies later in the evening.
Before I got out of bed, my wife left for Metro Manila’s deep south—Alabang—to attend an extended lunch party. Upon kissing me goodbye, she told me that she wouldn’t be back until midnight, leaving our fat feline companion and myself to our own devices for one whole day.
Intending to take full advantage of my solitude, I stayed in front of the computer and typed until I developed carpal tunnel syndrome and conjunctivitis. Meanwhile, our indifferent overweight cat proceeded to ignore me just like he did during the other days of the week.
But as soon as the sun set, I whipped out my phone and sent text invitations to the two of three permanent members of the Thursday Institute for Transformative Ideas, an exclusive group which undertakes informal discussions regarding public transportation, traffic enforcement, and Katrina Halili.
Unfortunately, not a single one responded in the affirmative.
While B., a lawyer, was at home, he was nonetheless occupied with a role-playing game with his other friends, all geeks. For his part, A., a television producer, escaped the pressures of his job by spending the weekend in Cebu with his girlfriend—a rare privilege anyway you look at it. After all, whenever assaulted from all sides by various forms of  pressure, regular people such as myself merely scamper off to the nearest cubicle and cry in the toilet, an option I was about exercise since no one among my closest friends gave in to my form of beer pressure.
However, since thirst got the better of my self-pity, I decided to grab a few cold ones—all by myself—at our regular watering hole in Quezon City. No amount of pride, prudence, and fortitude was about to prevent me from nursing an alcoholic beverage, best consumed cold.
Fortunately, even before I finished my second bottle, I was joined by E., the bar’s lovely proprietor, who agreed to sit with me and listen to my tales of woe. And by the time I left at midnight, I was already sufficiently loaded, satisfied that another Saturday didn’t go by uneventfully.

Dial a friend

SO the cellphone rings in the middle of a cool afternoon.
Although my phone shows the calling party’s 11-digit mobile number, it fails to identify to whom it belongs.
Which is a puzzlement.
After all, ever since I got myself a fairly sophisticated phone early this year, I have kept the contact details of some 200 important individuals, many of whom have yet to be reminded of my existence.
And since none of them have ever replied to my text messages, they can hardly be expected to call me up.
As such, the Friday afternoon call was obviously initiated by my credit card company’s much-reviled, much-abused contact center agent, suffering from stress and sleep deprivation, which may somehow result in occasional breakouts of facial acne.
Whenever I pick up these calls, the said agent—most of the time female—will inquire one, whether I have already received my billing statement, and two, whether I have already remitted payment.
In a generous effort to share misery, I almost always reply to both questions in the negative, even though the two conditions have already been satisfied.
But when I answered the call during that afternoon, I discovered that the calling party had exceeded my expectations.
Instead of a Filipina with an American accent at the other end, a masculine voice asked me—all of a sudden—who I was. Like any neurotic worth his paranoia, I merely continued to talk without disclosing any personal information, curious as to why this person wanted to know my name.
To get on my good side, he rephrased the question and explained his situation. After introducing himself, V. told me that he needed to know why his landline phone was being charged for a call to my cellphone number. Since we didn’t know each other—at least not in this life—he neither recognized my number nor did he remember placing such a call.
He then asked me whether I could help him explain to his phone company that the billing was erroneous. After all, he lived alone, received very few visitors, and was not employed as a telemarketer.
And when I learned that his phone company and my internet service provider were one and the same, I told him I was with him for the long haul. This was my way of exacting revenge, however little, on the company which screwed us both—V. with his false billing and me with so many dropped internet connections that has fouled up many a deadline.
Unfortunately, the day of reckoning never came.
Thanks to my cellphone’s log, and V.’s journal, we both find out that the call had indeed been made by a mutual friend who flew in from New York, stayed in V.’s apartment for a few hours, and took liberties with his landline without telling him.
As a result, V. and I now occasionally text each other, checking up on each other, still amazed that we got to know each other through what initially appeared as a wrong number.

Baby you can drive my car

YES, especially if you’re inclined towards ten-year old, four-door Japanese compact sedans with chipped paint, poor airconditioning, and interiors that smell like wet underarms on a hot afternoon.
Because this is exactly the kind of car that I have.
But it is far from being a lemon.
After all, every single day, whenever I turn on the ignition, Charing—the car’s name—is always ready to roll, prepared to take on the wide variety of challenges posed by Metro Manila traffic.
Be it speed demons or suicidal pedestrians, Charing can either evade or outmaneuver both, with very minimal assistance from her driver, a certified amateur who inadvertently turns up the airconditioning whenever he wants to listen to the radio.
Despite two previous owners and her long years on the road, Charing has remained dependable, never once breaking down, even after a minor collision with a jeepney in Makati.
During the height of lunch hour traffic a few months ago, I made the mistake of overtaking a jeepney which was cruising along Chino Roces Avenue at the speed of a funeral hearse.
A few seconds after I stepped on the gas pedal, I heard a crash on my right,
which later turned out to a broken signal light and a crumpled fender; damages sustained by Charing. I then jumped out of car, dazed and confused about how the whole thing took place.
Meanwhile, in a move to defend himself and possibly reduce his liability, the jeepney driver immediately confronted me and said that I had miscalculated my turn, resulting in the jeepney’s dislocated muffler.
With the confidence of a mechanical engineer explaining combustion technology, he said that when I rear-ended his vehicle, the muffler was forced to skew to the left.
To correct this problem, all I had to do was to fork over two hundred pesos for the muffler’s repair.
Since the encounter immediately demolished whatever confidence I had behind the wheel, I lost all ability to think clearly nor quickly and proceeded to fork out the money.
However, later on, I realized that I was an unsuspecting victim of a small time con. Besides failing to inspect the supposedly damaged muffler, I also automatically waived my right to dispute the jeepney driver’s version of events.
Upon reaching the office, I puttered about, dazed and distracted, spending the next eight hours wondering why I ever bothered to bring the car to Makati, one of the worst places to drive in the city.
Which is why I’m regularly taking trains to work now.
It’s faster and cheaper although it smells worse than Charing’s interior. But that’s another story.