Daily Archives: December 17, 2007

Dear Marocharim, My Girlfriend Cheated On Me

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   There’s no letter, but a friend of mine just approached me this afternoon to say that his girlfriend cheated on him a few weeks back.  Ah, a subject that hits so close to home: who else to ask for free advice than from a guy who got cheated on some years back?

   What is “cheating?”  Coming from Philippine politics, “cheating” is not a lapse in judgment: it is completely premeditated.  Like, Gloria Arroyo didn’t have a lapse in judgment, but instead was planning on cheating her way to election victory all along.  No man can develop a 100% accurate radar to know if his significant other is cheating on him: most discoveries of cheating come either from paranoia, or a little birdie talked.  As such, your girlfriend didn’t “accidentally” cheat on you.  More on that later.

   Because no man (and I’m talking about straight men) can ever know if his girlfriend is actually cheating on him until it is actually confirmed, all men should develop a healthy paranoia for cheating bitches: eyes at the back of one’s head, a third ear, a second nose, and heightened extrasensory perception that rivals even that of Jean Grey and Professor X combined.

   Now assuming that you already know (or caught) the love of your life cheating on you, here’s a piece of advice: “letting go” is a nuanced expression.  I would suggest beating your girlfriend up until she’s a bloody unrecognizable pulp with her then-cute nose dangling by a thin strand of wet bloody mucus, but that doesn’t sit too well with gender-sensitivity, women’s groups, and mothers of all ages.

   First of all, don’t blame yourself.  You didn’t do anything wrong, so you shouldn’t pay for the consequences.  The least you want is to set up a date to win her back.  Like say, talk out over coffee and discuss the terms of your relationship.  Or give your ex a bouquet of roses.  You’ll only be judged as a pathetic soul in search for soap-opera love.  Hmmm, that sounds extremely familiar… yeah, that’s what I did.

   Second, don’t plot revenge.  People make mistakes, and no matter how grave that mistake is, you really have to learn how to forgive people every once in a while.  Weigh all the factors in: is your effort at revenge worth the mistake?  Heck, is your effort at forgiveness even worth the mistake?  On another note, did you make some mistake that led to you being cheated on?

   Responding to romantic conflicts is a case-to-case basis, I can tell you.  But from personal experience, the best remedy is time.  Time doesn’t cure, and it sure as hell doesn’t heal all wounds.  As soon as you get over the initial pain of getting cheated on, you’ll look back at it one day and you’ll laugh.  It’s a humorous thing: like lifetime guarantees on electric appliances, love needs maintenance, and yes, it does come with money-back guarantees.

Oh Christmas Tree

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   I don’t know what’s up with my mom and my sister when it comes to decorating the Christmas tree: with cockroaches and mice running wild inside the insides of walls, I find the whole plan of an “edible tree” dubious.  Before I left, my sister was taping up yarn and chocolate coins to add to the already gaudy display of a Christmas tree with candy canes and small oranges.  I expect to come home today to the tune of a brightly-lit Christmas tree that has chicken drumsticks hanging on it, covered with the tinsel of oily adobo flakes.

   My idea of the perfect Christmas tree is a sexy prostitute dressed in a risqué Santa Claus outfit decked in frosty beer cans and Christmas lights, but that’s for a floor show in a nightclub.  There are other perversities like Santa-fetish bukkake, but that’s for another time.  I don’t know about this year’s Christmas tree at home, though: maybe there’s room in it for glittery scales of tuyo.  It is, after all, a time for economic crisis.

Thoughtless Counts

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   Like many people, I have a small collection of mugs and picture frames from Christmas parties where the rule for kris kringle is “unisex.”  I know that it’s the thought that counts when it comes to giving gifts: it’s hard enough to think of a good gift to give to some name you picked off the hat a week in advance.  But when you do the bunutan right then-and-there during the Christmas party… it’s a whole different story.

   I suppose that I have every right to be a Grinch or Scrooge: it’s not like the mugs were made in amateur Pottery class.  Or that the picture frames were made out of used popsicle sticks from pinipig icedrop.  My small collection of “unisex” photo albums weren’t even made from paiper-mâché.

   Disguising said gift in a smart-looking gift bag doesn’t help, either.  Even adding candies or chocolate bars inside the mug only adds to the thoughtlessness of things.

   Look at it this way: Santa Claus gives a lot of thought to “naughty or nice,” and takes a full year to have his elves mine coal somewhere for brats.  Santa Claus doesn’t harness his reindeer and fly to chimneys all over the world to put mugs on Christmas stockings.  It’s not like I’m a 22-year-old man who still believes in Santa Claus, but you get the picture.

   But it’s not like I’m a very thoughtful gift-giver myself: because I always seem to pick girls’ names from the kris kringle hat, I head off to the mall to look for stuffed toys.  The reason being is that they’re so easy to buy: what girl doesn’t like teddy bears that come inside cans, or teddy bears that come with perfume?  They go ga-ga over the seemingly cute bear and how much thought I apparently put in it.  Maybe a couple of hundred bucks, and the humiliation of being at Blue Magic for fifteen minutes.