Until now, I still find Valentine’s day to be a strange holiday. From my childhood I remember that it coincides with Teacher’s day at school, a time when we give flowers and little gifts to our mentors after mass or a short program on the nobility of teachers and teaching as a profession. In high school Valentine’s day is usually when the Junior and Senior Prom is held–a time of serious adolescent anguish for me. In our home, Valentine’s day is usually observed by a somewhat special dinner cooked by my mother, with the night ending with me being tucked in bed a little earlier than usual. My parents are not the romantic, touchy-feely type of couple. Their affection for each other, I’m afraid, is for the most part, Edwardian. They are very decorous, and cautious of revealing too much of themselves. This is probably why I’m such a cold-hearted bitch myself. Of course, I joke. In recent years dinner is still being served, but with the physical improbability of them being able to tuck me in bed early, I now take it upon myself to “conveniently” vanish at the appointed time.
Here in Buddhist Cambodia, where I have seen Valentine’s day for at least 5 years, I’m still surprised at the increasing fervor in which this holiday is being celebrated. I would venture an opinion that it rivals–if not exceeds the celebration of Christmas, in terms of the commercial aspects of this particular holiday. From almost every street corner of Phnom Penh, vendors with flowers, balloons, plush toys and other gifts sprout like mushrooms after a rainy day. Blame this on the increasing purchasing power of the so-called middle class Cambodians, or on the fact that more than half of Cambodia’s population is under the age of 24, even on the youth’s love of anything barang (foreign).
Now, there has never been a Valentine’s day when I had someone to celebrate it with. It always come at at time when I had no lover, or if I had one, we always seemed to fight a week or a few days before that day, to reconcile a few days after, or never. Some of my friends think it’s a deliberate effort on my part, but it’s not. Really. I don’t mind spending for some gifts, silly as some of them might be. Though I’m clearly not the world’s biggest romantic (refer to my Edwardian parents above), I still long for that day when someone who’s not my friend will greet me a happy Valentine’s day with a kiss, or God forbid, a gift of sweets or of fragrance. But there are times when life seems to play a practical joke on me, forcing me to laugh at myself rather than risk being laughed at by others.
I’ve had daddy fantasies for as long as I can remember. As a boy, though I wasn’t aware yet that any of my feelings had a sexual undertone, I’ve always admired how handsome my father was. I mean, my family is quick to point out that except for my nose (round) and my hair (straight, unlike me), my father and I share the rest of our physical characteristics. I never saw that, though. To me his aquiline nose and curled hair (what’s left of it, anyway) are marks of beauty that confused me a lot during puberty.
Up to now, I get attracted–without fail, to men with sharp, longish noses and curled hair.
I was also what one would call a sexually precocious child. I was circumcised in the summer that I turned ten years old and I had sex with a 16 year-old son of a family friend about 3 weeks after my wounds have healed. In the years that followed I would manage to have sex with men who were much older than I. These ranged from the schoolbus driver, the security guard in my high school, even to laborers in a construction site across our house. Their ages ranged from 25 to 35. And of course, that son of a family friend.
This persisted until I was in my 20s, about the time when I began having relationships with guys (who were around my age). I had sex with many older (sometimes married) guys. I began wondering how it would feel like to be in a relationship with them. I didn’t pursue them deliberately; things kind of just happened that way. However, no matter how many mature men I slept with, I never got into a relationship with any of them. My lovers (5 of them) shared the physical traits of having a sharp nose and curled hair, but their age never veered far from my own.
I thought about it and decided that probably I wasn’t the type who would be an older guy’s boyfriend. Simply because I was never boy-ish in thoughts, words, and deeds. In fact, I loathe the cutesy-patootsy stuff done by boys and young men. I have no patience for that. Whether it’s sex or relationship, I had always wanted my partners to be–pardon the pun, straight-to-the-point.
And now that I am approaching the second half of my thirties, I am slightly disconcerted by the type of guys that I seem to attract. A couple of months ago I met a guy through a gay networking site for coffee (and a possible hook-up). His profile stated that he was 28 years old. His photo, a bit blurred, showed a lanky guy with curled hair. But in person, lanky was lithe and his 28 looked like he was 18. He admitted that he is in fact, 22 years old. Naturally I lost any appetite for anything and the cup of coffee witnessed a protracted afternoon talk-fest.
However, talking to this boy made me realize how mature he is. He seemed to know what he was talking about all the time (he’s in his last term in the College of Architecture) and I never saw any of that cutesy-patootsy stuff I mentioned a while back. When we were about to part he asked if he can see me again.
Moi, ever so impatient and easily annoyed by the younger set, said yes.
So now we have been going out intermittently for the last 2 months. We would go to the different art galleries of Phnom Penh because we share a passion for art. Did I mention that he is a trained dancer? On occasion he dances for a modern dance troupe in Phnom Penh. I haven’t seen him perform but I can see his natural grace so I can only imagine how he is on stage. I haven’t introduced him to any of my friends because I am a bit ‘ashamed’ for dating a much younger guy. I’m not ashamed of him, only of the fact that I’m dating him. He is beginning to feel like some sort of a guilty pleasure.
And I am just stumped at where this is going to. Fortunately, I have not heard him say the ‘L’ word to me. I wouldn’t know how to respond to it. I have to admit that I’m growing fond of him. I like the fact that he seems to be very independent and self-reliant. I am somewhat baffled at why he seems to like me.
Have I finally become the object of my younger-day fantasies? And, could it be that, the reason why I was never offered a relationship by any of my daddy fuck-buddies was because, deep-inside, they probably sensed and knew that I was also a daddy all along?
It has been more than 14 months since the dissolution of my last relationship. Please don’t think that I’m counting the days. I’m not. I just happen to think about it because (of my prodigious memory?) in the last few days it has been the subject of my conversation with friends.
When I caught up with A, my Singaporean friend in Kuala Lumpur, we talked about our relationships (his, and my non-existent one). He’d known about what happened between K and I through my blog but of course he’d want to hear it straight from the bitch’s mouth–so to speak. Besides, there are (juicy) details that I didn’t include in the blog, as it is my common practice, especially when I write about certain things about my life. So there I was, over our dinner of Nasi Lemak and Nasi Bojari, talking about the end of my affair with K, juicy (and sordid) details included. This subject was taken up to when we were having desserts at MOF.
When I got back to Phnom Penh, the same thing happened. Once, after a couple of hours of ukay shopping, V and I found ourselves at home, sitting idly by the porch, simmering in the balmy heat of the afternoon. I do not exactly remember what we were talking about, until the subject shifted to relationships. I am sure that if V wasn’t a chef by profession, he would’ve been a great counselor, or therapist. He has a non-antagonistic way of asking questions that one (meaning I) feels very comfortable to answer him. So there I was again, over glasses of iced water, talking about my break-ups (yes, it happened twice) with K.
One is tempted to ask, do you not get tired of talking about this?
I am, in fact, tired of talking about my relationship with K. Not because I’m still hurting. Talking about him doesn’t cause tears to well up in my eyes or make my heart clench with pain. It does, however, raises my hackles. Probably because I am still a bit mad. At him? Possibly. Consider this exchange, which happened this year:
February 11 – I receive an email from K; it is addressed to his Board of Directors, and it is about an update on his NGO’s recruitment of new board members. As a former volunteer advisor of his NGO, I do not see anything unusual with me receiving this email. Maybe I’m still part of K’s work-related mailing list. Not having anything to say, I ignore this email.
February 13 – I receive another email from K; this time announcing the recruitment of the new board of directors for his NGO, including the nomination process and other details. At the end of the email, a short statement: ‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’
Acting on impulse, I write this reply: ‘I think you sent this to me by mistake.’
February 14 – This response comes: ‘I’m sorry if you think I sent this to the wrong address. I sent it to everyone I know, even used to know. The greeting wasn’t a mistake, though.’
With alacrity, I type this message: ‘Please remove my email address from your address book, so that this mistake doesn’t happen again. STOP BOTHERING ME. And please do not respond to this email anymore.’
So far, he has been compliant to my request. The few people who knew of this little incident thought that my actions were a tad harsh. However, I will stand by my actions. If they knew K the way I know him, if they knew everything that happened between us, they will understand. That was not me being bitter, angry, and vindictive. That was me choosing to protect myself.
I realize that I have only started dating other people a few weeks ago, well over a year after my break-up. But this was not because my heart was crushed into a million tiny pieces that I am unable to love anybody else. This is because many other things happened to me last year: I got sick, had surgery, moved to a new flat twice, almost moved to a new country, revitalized my consulting work, etc. Entering into a new relationship was not a priority.
How about now then?
A good question. I would say that it’s still not a priority, but I will not turn away from it if the opportunity comes. Something about the person I am dating now fills me with a certain kind of dread, simply because dating someone like him is something I’d never done before. I have hope, though. It’s been said that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. So there.
Is there a bigger tragedy than a crime of passion? This has been a subject of many films and television programs, consistently presented as a tragedy. Love, specifically the intense (and obsessive) kind, can easily result in the murder of one (or both) of the lovers, or some other unsavory fate.
A crime of passion is defined as a crime in which the perpetrator commits a crime, especially assault or murder, against a spouse or other loved one because of sudden strong impulse such as a jealous rage or heartbreak than as a premeditated crime.
Something has recently happened to X, a friend of mine. And this has led him to commit a crime of passion (sorta). Before you get alarmed, rest assured that there is no murder in this story. This doesn’t make it less tragic, though. The tragedy lies in falling in love.
Or thinking that you have. And there is no one to love you back.
Because X believes he has fallen in love, and because that love has proven to be unrequited, he sought ways to make Y–the object of his affection, feel the same way for him. He sought solace and the opinion of Y’s supposedly closest friends, who were a bit unkind in their opinions of him. Perhaps puzzled, X talked to more people and soon words and statements crossed each other like filaments of a spider, spun with such complexity that fact and fiction could not be distinguished from each other anymore.
At the center of it all was X, who wore the badge of jilted lover with such fervor, unaware that the web of words (and lies?) he unwittingly spun, in the hope of capturing Y, has done exactly the opposite: it just pushed Y farther away from him. Y was subjected to an almost rabid attack on his character by the people he trusted and considered friends all this time.
And now, one is left pining for the other, who has chosen to distance himself from the company of his friends and so-called friends.
When things like this happens to one’s friends, the mature thing to do is to not take sides and let things play out. My first reaction was to be mad. At X for being a loose-tongued and tactless narcissist.
In the first place, I did not believe that he has fallen in love with Y. I was, still am, in the opinion that X just misconstrued Y’s kindness for affection. That this just was complicated by his loneliness in being in a new country and by the fact that they had sex. I understand X’s need for attention. He was perfectly happy when he got it from Y. X lashed out (by talking to Y’s ‘friends’) when he felt he was not receiving the same amount of attention that Y had lavished upon him before.
I am mad at X because he doesn’t see the damage he has caused Y. In X’s mind, he is the only aggrieved party. Because he has fallen in love, and his heart had been broken, he did this thing. So he cannot be blamed, really. Crap, I say. In France, crime passionel is a valid defense in a murder case. It’s probably a matter of letting people believe that one did it, indeed, because of love.
In this case, however, I do not. But further thinking has led me to ask: Who am I to say that X is not really in love with Y? Have I become so jaded that pronouncements of love do not resonate in my mind anymore? Have I become too cynical that even a hint of love, even (especially) if it doesn’t involve me, raises my hackles and makes my ears fume?
My disbelief doesn’t make his feelings–whatever they are–less true for X.
This is why I am less mad at X now. I still think that what he did was wrong. But in this situation, the blame doesn’t rest on one person only. The morbid confluence of events and people just distributes blame into many tiny pieces that can be shared by all. Here lies the greatest tragedy.
These events unfolded while I was abroad, and I only heard part of Y’s side when we chatted on-line. Personally, I was a bit relieved to be out of this morbid sphere of events. Y promised to tell me the full side of his story soon. He doesn’t need to, but if he wants somebody to listen to him when the time comes that he wants to talk, who am I to refuse him?
My account of this story is an amalgam, at best; a combination of the (partial/ biased) accounts of other friends, X and Y included.
Obviously, the opinions and speculations are entirely my own.
