Well, Dad received an offer from some corporation (or maybe I just wanted to make it sound grand but that’s what I’ve heard, anyway) that’s based in Abu Dhabi. Yeah, the United Arab Emirates. It’s just near Dubai, like a one-hour drive or something so maybe we could go to Palm Jumeirah and all that classy seven-star hotel and the beach and shawarma stands. Anyway, the offer deals with an amount that’s bigger with his salary here plus education benefits for the minor (and I’m just seventeen, ohmaygad). I should demand for a condo unit, or a Macbook for studying (megaLULz for a spoiled corporate son, as if the very word ‘corporate’ fits with me).

But anyway, my Dad told me about the offer and asked my opinion about it the morning before I go to the concert. So I was feeling tense and light-headed at the same time: excited since I’d be seeing Ely Buendia and the rest of the guys onstage and tense, just tense, since I was kind of feeling that something could go wrong (and it did happen to Ely). With planned events I feel tension since most of them have this tendency to go haywire – not that I’m a huge pessimist but that’s just true, most of the time. I feel the bonkers and think of necessary preparations before even going. Like, mental preparations. Whatever.

When Dad told me about it, I was watching HBO and I was a bit absorbed with the movie. Here’s another thing: he’s completely fresh from the bed and his eyes were even tired from the sleep and he was having a hard time putting things into words so I thought he was just kidding. I was even checking if he’s lucid and conscious enough to even talk about such a serious thing to me – though I really liked his way of consulting to me.

“When will this happen?” I suddenly asked, somewhat excited.

If there’s anything I’ve been hoping ever since I got my ass on here at UPLB, it’s change. I’m demanding change – my course had to be a royal pain in the ass since I’m not really liking it, though nowadays I’m quite glued with my Economics subject since I’m having a good time with all the graphs but generally speaking – I don’t really like it. I should really apply for some writing-related course but I’m just not that inspired to even write those formal letters which addresses appeal to pity and all that please-admit-me stuff.

I welcome change. A lot, actually. Though usually I experience bouts of sentimental shit and all that goodbye stuff the way Holden hates saying goodbye without even surveying the entire place or something, but I’m actually good with adjusting. Living in the Middle East could be one of the major leaps in my life, and I don’t speak Arabian or even understand Arabian, but I hope they could at least speak and understand English – fluent or not. Else I shall master sign languages.

With all the pressing problems here in the Philippines (not politically or generally speaking, though), I think my Dad will accept the offer. I just hope this is not just some shoot-to-the-moon attempt to go abroad, study and work our asses off. Dammet, my Dad’s working on the same corporation for thirty-something years. It’s probably an attack towards our nationalism or patriotism or whatsoever, but I have no comment on that. As I’ve said, it’s more of the personal issues that presses us to actually migrate.

But lately, as I’ve been having a lot of rumination about it (and I’ve only conferred to two people and shared my side of story to them), it’s kind of sad. I mean, c’mon, where in the world can you even play on computer shops? Where can you find fishball vendors and jeepneys and phonies at malls wearing their fake Nikes? Where can you find Blogger’s events, friends who would even convince you to sleep at their dorm, orgmates to smoke with, to watch DVDs with, and even professors to prank?

Our homeland will always be dear to our hearts. It’s the single addiction we have ever since we were born.

I just hate it when my friends would be planning their subjects for the next semester or asking me what I’m gonna take next semester (probably literature subjects) or where am I gonna reside next semester. I wanted to tell them that hey, my Dad and I were planning to leave this October for Abu Dhabi. But I can’t. I’m not even sure about it, but what if everything’s settled? When will I wave goodbye at them? When will I even take a last glance at UPLB, at Drew’s Katipunan?

Sheeesh. I hate myself when I go emotional but it’s really nice to let it out for once in a while.

I’m actually one of the people you would not expect to go for some Eraserheads Reunion concert. I don’t really liked them as a band (I was around 5 to 7 years old when I was exposed to their music). Though of course they were legendary, but, I don’t know: maybe I was too young to even appreciate their music. The radio stations air their songs a lot during my glorious elementary days and I can still remember my sisters (both studying at High School) and their barkadas enjoying Eraserheads like madmen on a feast with lots of food and the radio on the table. I just liked them for one thing: their music brings me back to the past.

It was undeniably my first major concert (it should have been Maroon 5 but I was just lazy to purchase tickets online) and the sight of the crowd was personally new to me. The staff was strict enough to even ban my chained wallet (and since my wanting to enter the concert premises exceeded my wanting to keep the chain, I gave them the chain for free) and to ban backpacks and most camera models. At the field there were hotdog stands and Fish and Co. and flavored bottled water and warm iced tea (I don’t even know why they called it iced tea, for chrissake) and thousands of fans ranging from their mid-thirties to teenagers with their own levels of inclination towards the band. The crowd was nostalgically united by sentimental desires of seeing Eraserheads onstage despite disbandment way back 2003.

“Magpapatuli ako kapag hindi yan yung tugtog,” shouted one avid fan’s voice to my right.

I felt stupid that out of the fifteen songs they have played onstage, I could only sing four of them and out of those four, I could only sing one slightly perfect (in terms of the lyrics) and complete.

Alapaap and Ligaya were two of the first few songs sang with fireworks booming (and right now, I’m still getting the chills while remembering the opening moments – seriously) and I just can remember all my childhood days – probably close to what everyone felt while Eraserheads was playing their songs: it’s like a broken boom box brought to life that made you vividly remember the past.

Of course it was hot and humid and concerts are one of the events where you have the right to sweat profusely, but when you wistfully sing the songs and your mind brings you back to your High School days or College days or anything belonging to the past, you suddenly forget how humid it was or how the air smelled or how many times you have been damping your handkerchief to the entire of your head.

So maybe the fans were somewhat disappointed not to enjoy the concert to the fullest with the permanent interruption of Ely’s condition, or maybe they felt cheated since they have paid for a huge amount (1,350 pesos to 800 pesos if I’m not mistaken) and have come from different places and provinces, but I hope that the mere sight of the band being complete again (or maybe they should just have one last group hug that night) quenches their thirst for something more fulfilling.

Do you think another reunion concert could somehow compensate disappointments?

I think Ely should rest for a while.

P.S: Thanks to Juned and Poyt (for the last-minute announcement of free tickets and for her immaculate patience) and Red Horse for the tickets given gratis. Now, PICTURES! And link-love to newly-found friends and blogger friends as well who attended the event: Ria Jose, Carlo, Fritz, Rens, Jhed, Xienah, Aaron, Alan, Shari and Bleue (belated happy birthday, btw), L.A., Coy, Jeff, and everyone else!

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IT WAS NEVER my intention to say it, but I uttered it out of nowhere like some paranormal, sinister spirit corrupted myself. My entire body was shaking, profusely sweating, eyes dilating, and then I was shouting Ben! Ben! Oh, Ben! in this spontaneous, sexually-driven way and the mattress was croaking from the intensity with its bare metal-to-metal scratching like live springs orchestrated by making love.

It was almost eleven in the morning and my boyfriend and I did it again for the fifth time, non-stop, after drinking shots of left-over vodka from last night’s birthday celebration. He passed the Nursing Licensure Exam and of course, the entire clan left their bank accounts in a state of destitution and the sum of it was used to launch some grand congratulatory bash for him as if he was debutante. Only did the guests wear comfortable clothes instead of itchy gowns and suits, and all of us (most of the visitors are common friends) had fun with three vodka bottles given by his fifty-something uncle who has this phony-looking silver beard and a month of stubble. If there’s someone who’s really happy with the results, it’s his phony cardiologist-uncle and his varnished wooden cane. I could almost think of him jumping secretly in his bathroom the way old people do after knowing the results, as if it was something miraculous. I have to admit the news was something unexpected since he was never serious about Nursing. Of course he’s no douche bag who chases after drunk tattooed men at around midnight. He’s pretty decent, not really spiffy-looking but moderately okay for me.

The celebration had to end at 11 pm after someone puked spaghetti all over the dining table. The rest of our friends, including archbitch Jinky who once was my boyfriend’s ex (and probably the lamest of all the girlfriends he tucked in bed), reacted with all the known puking sounds known to man. The next thing that I could remember, the transparent glass table became a wretched field of belched spaghetti and spewed intestinal colors of reddish white and foams of saliva and the gastric smell of an overloaded celebration and the stench of vodka. I can’t imagine how their maid cleaned it up but it has to be the worst part of her job.

Then we did it at the bathroom. It wasn’t really spacious there but we did the kissing soon after we smoked the cigarette sticks left on his shelf – he rarely smokes, by the way – and after we brushed our teeth and bathe ourselves with water and the hot kissing. We were very much of a hygienic couple, believe it or not, but at desperate times we just forget about the germs and all and just do it. It’s part of the thrill anyway. But with the puking scenes we have seen downstairs at the dining table and the pool of spit and spew, I don’t think we can stomach it. Maybe we secretly wished to brush our teeth.

It was really tiring doing it but the clitoral bouts of hunger and my indefinite sexual desire which I got ever since fourth grade, after one of my elder playmates and I did it, was something impossible to miss. It’s something elusive, something that’s very much ephemeral that I can’t help but grasp it and do it with the fear of not experiencing it ever again. I don’t know why I think of sex as if it wouldn’t happen ever again; not that it’s in my genes or that I look fugly enough not to get my own dose of carnal satisfaction, but it’s something that troubles me a lot. My boyfriend once commented on how abnormally gigantic my sexual appetite was, but I just can’t help it. Everything else seemed quite obvious that I’m a nymphomaniac, or at least to him, but I can’t seem to open up the topic to him. He’s oftentimes touchy, so I have to confess this to him at the right time, the right day, the right occasion. Heck, why do I even have to confess it to him: he should know that quite a lot since he’s a freaking nurse.

In High School I was nothing but a girl with a meek disposition, mainly because I don’t really blend myself a lot with my classmates except for a few who had had the same experience, the same penetration, the same virginal rupture. But no, I don’t talk about it and they don’t really need to know. I just study a bit the way normal students do. I’m not really that kind of exceptional, though I once was elected as the president of the Dance Club – the god-awful Dance Club and their interpretative folk dances. Anyway. I’ve only had two sexual partners in High School and we would always do that either at the school’s bathroom or at their respective houses: one’s a complete pervert and his untrimmed nails (and don’t even wonder where he’s using those nails, it’s horrible) and another one’s a once-inexperienced shy-type of a guy who’s a real chess grandmaster. If I were to rate them from one to ten in terms of their sexual performances, the grandmaster would have all the tens in the world. In comparison to that one-of-a-kind pervert who’s really sick and demented and the missionary he was doing for the love of the world, the grandmaster simply is a grandmaster. He’s too much of an experimental guy – maybe out of applying Queen’s Gambit or Pirc Defense in sex – who would really dare himself to try anything just to satisfy his partner, like the sex should be mutual (and it should be), and it was – excuse me for the term – fucking great. That’s why I make it to a point of finding a chess grandmaster at my age, just so to conclude that those geeks play really good in bed.

I admit, I committed a lot of lies with my current relationship but that’s just because my boyfriend wouldn’t grant me the sex I was craving for. I think it’s reasonable, though, to seduce someone else by phone and make him come over your house and do it until death. Okay, I’ve had some steamy nights with some guy – my ex-boyfriend, actually – and the latest was like, three days ago. I can’t seem to put it in words: I don’t really love him, but I just really crave for the idea of him thrusting and I can see the bulging nerves on his slender biceps and his abs and all. It feels great. Every time I think of the scene, I’m half-wishing my boyfriend to be dead by now.

Then I was probably having a hang-over or something but I got sort-of delirious while my boyfriend and I were doing it for the fifth time. I was probably hallucinating over the vodka or maybe my consciousness was fading. He was boringly on top of me as usual and I just shouted Ben! Ben! Oh Ben, fuck me hard! for like ten times in this hushed, voodoo-ish manner like I’m some witch cursing my boyfriend. I really did. I really told myself to just behave while saying it since his parents are sleeping downstairs on the master’s bedroom and we were tugging ourselves, though I’m quite sure his drunkard Dad wouldn’t even give a damn about it.

Shoot, my boyfriend wasn’t Ben.

I know it’s pretty lousy to reason out that I shouted the wrong name.

Post header courtesy of Deviantart.

I was laughing in my most boisterous when those doctors were trying to revive Superman. They’ve used needles but it bent, defibrillators but it exploded. It was an ironic situation – imagine the Superman lying at a hospital bed, weak and powerless. Don’t they have anti-kryptonite oral supplements? Tablets, perhaps?

And then I thought of how much gel the production spent for Superman. The curl itself seemed petrified with all the pomade and the gel. It’s probably a thousand dollars and yet it wasn’t even waterproof (remember the scene where Superman was stabbed with a sharpened raw kryptonite: his entire body was wet and his bangs were a complete failure). Really, it goes to show that even the Superman also gets his own spoonful of a bad hair day.

While watching, my nephew asked why Superman wasn’t visiting the Philippines, or rather, why was The Philippines not included in the film (he meant why Superman wasn’t doing his heroic deeds here in our country). Well, for one, he’d probably lose all his powers flying here and there saving every villager from those MILF rebels or capture every corrupt politician or even prevent rape from happening. It’s virtually impossible and even with superhuman powers, he can’t just augment the madness that’s going on here. And besides, I told him, I don’t have his cellphone number or his e-mail add. Why bother?

_{I never thought it was shown two years ago. I thought it was one of the latest. Darn it.}

I was able to watch Superman Returns last Saturday, 9 PM (Manila time) on HBO, and that’s after sacrificing my cravings to play DoTA with the entire teenage population of the subdivision. It was a crucial moment for me, really. My friends felt ignored just because of some popular movie.

My Dad knew me very well in terms of my preferences with movies and he was intently wondering on why I got myself watching a comic-based movie (no derogatory intentions). Okay, I liked the Spiderman series but that’s just that. I enjoyed it as leisurely as how a typical audience would react without any bias or fanaticism over Spiderman. That being said, I also liked Superman Returns (without even watching the prequel, dammit). Yes, the superhero concept was far from the natural and the reality but eventually, as you dig the movie deeper, you’ll get to see that even this concept has its own flaw/s. Superman’s weakness had to be kryptonite.

So no matter how powerful, how immortal a superhero can be, they still have their soft spots.

Wait, what am I talking about again?

I suddenly hated Lex Luthor all the more. He was the greediest antagonist I have ever seen, far more greedy than that of Dr. Octavius (if I am not mistaken) of Spiderman. Even far more greedy than Emperor Gross of Blue Blink. LOL.

But I once watched Smallville when I was young. I did. *sings somebody saaaaaaave me*

“…the transformation of a teenager to a beautiful, charming lady [ready to be devirginized, legal and eighteen enough to control her alcoholic and shopping sprees].”

It sounds awful but it’s the usual regal statements delivered by debutantes to their guests through their letters lined with gold and sequins and the whatnots, except the bracketed lines. Since most of my batchmates way back High School are celebrating their eighteenth birthday this year, I shall be invited. That’s aside from the fact that I’m so fucking popular back then, LOL. No, I’m just kidding. I’m regularly assigned by the faculty as an emcee or as a Bible reader during…

Anyways, someone would be having her transformation rites this coming September and she was inviting me to be a part of her ugly-duckling-turned-beautiful-swan event (I have to admit, she’s unbelievably beautiful in every sense of the word). We were phone pals way back Grade 6 and we used to talk about his scandalous brother and our household and her crush, Dale, and my Dad and my underwear’s color and everything under the sun, and I never thought those days would give me a one-way ticket to some glorious debut.

Not that I’m making a big deal out of her debut, but we weren’t that close in High School. She used to dance a lot with all those gemmed headdresses and I used to sing at the choir (what a loser - I know, but we used to sing at Hyatt so beat that!) so our social circles don’t match that much except for a handful of common friends. We’re distant friends, that’s all. We’re friends, yes, and we’re the kind of friends who would just talk to each other when everyone else would be leaving the campus to go home - and we would have terrible bouts of loneliness sitting opposite to each other at the amphitheatre waiting for our never-punctual service rides.

Oh well, the thing is I haven’t replied to her text message since yesterday since I’m not in the mood to text anybody. I forced myself to finish Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and played around five to six rounds of DoTA and my eyes almost gouged out from its sockets.