To be perfectly honest, my boyfriend Marco isn’t my “type.” I like my guys dangerous-looking with nuts on the side; Marco with his shaved head looks like a basketball jock cum serial dater. The kind of guy who wouldn’t notice me in a crowded room, who’d eventually date me once he knows I like having fun, then never call again. The only thing that was missing was the argyles and the popped collar. On the night we first met, I was already preparing to get my heart broken. Little did I know that I would luck out with him – the Pearl Boy exterior was only a genetic inheritance. Deep down, he’s the biggest dork in the world. More importantly, Marco and I turned out to share the same values, the same interests, the same sense of humor, and the same libido. And he wasn’t a serial dater (he only had one girlfriend before me).
This is what I thought Marco was like the first time I met him
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I love horror movies as much as anyone with a strong appetite for cinematic blood, guts, and gore, but there are horror movie sub-genres I don’t touch unless I absolutely have to. These are supernatural movies and Asian horror flicks with ghosts and shit. To me, these movies take the fun away from horror because I get genuinely scared. My vivid imagination doesn’t make it any easier; I remember the most frightening movie scenes the moment I start nodding off to sleep. To recover from a supernatural horror movie, I have to go to bed with the lights on for a week.
To celebrate Halloween, I invited the Hohobags over for candy, alcohol, and horror movies last night. I thought we’d never get to the movie part of the night, but we eventually stopped talking and got around to watching Paranormal Activity, which was followed shortly by Clueless so we could fall asleep to pretty thoughts of pink fur and plaid. (Am I the only one here who’s weirded out by Clueless‘ incestuous plot twist? How come I didn’t spot this when I was in fifth grade? Whatever happened to Alicia Silverstone anyway? And why does my boyfriend withhold his affection every time young Jeremy Sisto comes on screen?) Without looking at the synopsis, I knew I’d probably have trouble sleeping for the next couple of days.
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I took one look at the line and left. The Pasig City Hall guard said that the first step of voter’s registration is to stand in this long, snake-like line in order to receive a number, which will then designate your place in the real cue. Cueing to cue – that has to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in the two hours I’ve been awake. I couldn’t stand the inconvenience of it all and left.
My mom got pretty pissed off at how easily I gave up on Philippine bureaucracy, but I felt that it wasn’t worth my time lining up to register for the elections. In the first place, I’m probably going to vote for Candidate Abstain because don’t believe in any of the candidates running for presidency, not even Noynoy. Especially not him. No offense to his early supporters, but I highly doubt that he’s going to change the face of Philippine politics when he hasn’t done anything beyond being born as Cory and Ninoy’s son and passing five or six bills. Doesn’t anyone realize that if he wins, he’s going to be the second Philippine president whose parent was a president before him? How is that going to change the personality politics and nepotism that characterizes much of our government today?
The stupid part about this whole morning is that I’m going to go back to city hall tomorrow morning, brave the cue for the cue, and register to vote anyway. As I mentioned earlier, my mom got pretty pissed off that I chose to make better use of my time this morning. Working on the logic that participating in the elections is the one big thing the indifferent middle class can do to make a difference, she told me, “Don’t you dare complain about the country.” I started giving an argument about how voting is purely a symbolic practice that doesn’t amount to anything, especially in a country where the outcome of the elections can be easily tipped in the favor of the candidate with more money, guns, and goons. Why should someone who no longer believes in the integrity of the elections waste an entire morning lining up for an abstain vote?
I was about to start forming an argument about how casting an indifferent ballot is not the only way to serve the country, but then I stopped myself. What have I been doing to make this country a relatively better place? My biggest priority is to make lots and lots of money so I can be financially independent. As such, I’m too bourgeois for the activist movement now. I do have romantic fantasies of working for an NGO once it’s time for me to move on from working at home, but these are just free-floating ideas. I didn’t pay for my taxes this year (but if our tax money ended up paying for our President’s lavish trips abroad, I certainly don’t regret skipping on my taxes). I don’t even have time to read the papers in the morning.
One person’s vote may not have any real influence over the outcome of the Philippine elections, but people still believe in its symbolic value. No one will believe that I do give a fuck about this country because I couldn’t even spare a morning to cue for a cue. So fine, I’ll wake up at 7 am again and brave the lines, if only to lend credibility to my criticism of our future leaders. And who knows, maybe I’ll discover that one of these trapos are actually worth my vote come election time.
