Exploits of a City Dweller

Lately I’ve noticed that my toes have been remarked upon more often than ever.  People seem to be fascinated with the fact that they’re…well…pink.

I know what you’re thinking…What the **expletive** is she writing about body parts for?! About her toes no less!! What’s next? The molecular structure of human innards?

“Because I can!!” she snaps back ferociously, arms akimbo, chin in the air, hair blowing in the breeze, looking strangely like Darna – minus the golden head gear and the Good Morning towel draping from her crotch ( The purpose of which I have yet to delve into. Maybe it has magical powers. Maybe, like Achilles and his heel, it is there to protect the heroine’s only weakness in which case Darna should no longer be deemed an appropriate role model for young people ).

Anyway, before I get derailed into an entirely new topic…

I don’t particularly take pride in my toes. They’re just there. I keep them clean but that’s about it. As with what my college friend used to say, they will matter little in the grand scheme of things. What disturbs me is the way the remarks are conveyed. Maybe I don’t seem like somebody who is capable of receiving normally phrased compliments because people insist on uttering them in such a menacing way:

“P%#*!@ ina, Jane, puputulin ko yang paa mo eh! Huwag ka nga magsandals!”

or

“E kung buhusan ko ng muriatic yang paa mo!”

Wait..Can you at least give me a 10-minute head start? I don’t know about you but I would want a shot at keeping them intact.

To you folks who are so keen to witness their depredation, my toes have a sob story (Yes, whip out the tissue and the calorie-infested comfort food). In gradeschool, they were my least favorite body parts as I had painful ingrown toenails. In hindshight, it was really my fault but can you blame a kid for not wanting to quit football? Everyday, I would come home with bloody socks (not excessively, just spots here and there).

If that wasn’t enough, here’s where it plummets:

I was over at my friend’s house one afternoon. She was fooling around with her brother’s toy gun, the kind that shoots tiny green pellets. It didn’t seem that dangerous but it is capable of causing a substantial amount of pain if you get shot point blank. The only thing I remember about that misfortune was her aiming the barrel down and her finger accidentally pulling the trigger (all this in slow motion. I have an odd way of recalling my childhood).

Guess what was in point blank range. 

I assume that’s what it would feel like to be shot with a real bullet except maybe with more heat emanating from my lower extremities. I limped around for days. My friend is thankful we were at HER house with her mother downstairs or I would have shoved the thing up her…Nevermind. They gave me pandesal for merienda, a 13-year-old’s solace.

I also failed to mention that when I got chickenpox a few years before, my mutant toe was the commemorative site chosen by that first vesicle to appear before swathing me with a multitude of it’s kindred. Earlier still, my toenail got caught between the door and a hard place, withered, died, and just when it was loose enough, my brilliant sandbox friend stepped on it, unceremoniously dislodging the poor thing before its time.

For some reason, the cosmos seered cancer-causing rays of hatred towards my toes. It went on for years…

Cue inspirational music…Cue collective gasps of awe.

So before you heap contumely on them for having a pinkish glow, it’s only because they fought a war and lived.

Here’s why I stubbornly refuse to become a proponent of RnB and HipHop: For the past 20 years (a loose approximation), these purported artists have yet to come up with material that does not include booty or bling, two things that I cannot under any circumstance relate to.  Can you name one video that does not feature oversized female behinds or something blindingly expensive? Wait…One video comes to mind, Outkast’s Sorry Miss Jackson released in 2000. The song’s anomalous (an appropriate use of the term as nudity and vainglory seem to be a chronic thing with these people) video included an old woman and a house full of cats and dogs. I remember watching it in awe half expecting a voluptuous “shorty” to appear sprawled on the floor somewhere. But nothing….Wwwwweeeeeeiiiiiirrrrrrdddd.

Ok, so at some point in my youth I became a fan of Mariah Carey. Allow me to justify that as a symptom of adolescence and the fact that the woman used to sing, the operative words being “used to”. Now that her vocal prowess has withered down to breathy falsettos from what used to be an impressive 8-octave vocal range, I am significantly less amused. It also didn’t help that she decided to expose more of herself than I’m willing to see. For instance, is it just me or did her mammary glands get into a serious argument? Someone do us all a favor and reconcile the two before they end up some place unpleasant. I can see the headlines on entertainment magazines: Pop Diva to Brassiere Manufacturers: Back to the Drawing Boards!

I recently joined a little contest…I won honorable mention which I will take as compliment whichever way they serve it. So as a shameless fare-thee-well to this month, here’s my entry:

February 7th, 2008 at 4:07 am

Be forewarned. There is no happy ending to this tale. I’m not even sure it can be classified as a “tale” seeing as my romantic history is considered one of the bigger non-events of my life. In a nutshell, all the men in my life are taken by one or a combination of the following factors:

a. Another woman

Seeing as I am deathly afraid of the Karmic lightning bolt that will zing my rear end should I decide to deliberately extinguish some poor girl’s relationship with the guy I am obssessed with, you guessed right…I’m way too honest for my own good. At the rate I’m going, I’ll fit snuggly in the “strangely single lady with gazillion cats” category. I already have a cat. Thank goodness he’s gay which will rule out uncotrollable feline reproduction.

b. God

I remember clearly the day I was violently made aware of the existence of the opposite sex. I was 11. Sitting in church on one of those tedious Sundays, I suddenly took notice of a young lad. He was standing next to the priest. In a few years, he BECAME the priest thus ending any delusions I might have had. For what it’s worth, that was the only time in my life I looked forward to standing in line for communion.

c. Another man

Why is it that I can only have intellectual conversations with gay men? With straight men, it’s a different story. It’s either I do all the talking, they do all the talking or we both quietly play with our spoons while I wishfully imagine the Hubble Space Telescope mysteriously dropping from the sky and landing on whatever restaurant we happen to be in.

d. An incurable emotional turmoil that is “the Ex”

A few years ago, I found myself getting mushy over a fellow from work. We came from the same university so I was 80% sure he was not a serial killer or a sexual predator of some sort. Plus, he seemed like a nice guy. So I agree to go out with him. To my chagrin, his idea of a “date” is to spend the evening drinking iced tea at a gasoline station convenience store and to top it all off, he would talk of nothing else but his ex-girlfiriend. On and on and on about the “fish” that got away. The fool didn’t even pay for my drink. So guys, here’s a tip: If you plan to turn one of your dates into an instant shrink session, at least be courteous enough to dish out 20 pesos for the f*@#%! iced tea.

So as president of the SSBC (Single Since Birth Club), allow me to stand on the proverbial wooden box and announce to my kindred everywhere: Membership is free and we have jackets!

If I ever get to publish a book, I will have something like this on the cover. Of course, the backdrop is from my old 2007 Starbucks planner. Just in case some rat fink recognizes it and decides to tell on me…There, Starbucks planner people, I cited my source! Please don’t sue me… ***insert spineless whimper here***

I was in the middle of a rice patty next to an isawan stand. I didn’t even question what it was doing there, I just went about like it was normal for people to set up business in the middle of nowhere (Talk about location!). We were having a gathering of some sort and among the people present was Joan, a friend from work who is 8 months pregnant. Behind the isawan stood a faceless rock star enjoying his snack (the oddities keep piling up!). Nobody mentioned he was a rock star. You know how in dreams we have this superhuman ability to discern who and what people are even if they don’t remotely resemble anything we’ve encountered in real life?

Here’s the part of my dream that made me question my sanity:

While clutching her oversized belly, Joan suddenly yelled at the rock star: “Why didn’t you tell me the truth about the music?!! Now look what happened to me!! Why didn’t you tell me the truth?!”

I’m open to whatever interpretation (or diagnoses of my mental state) you can throw my way.