(This is an old topic that’s somewhere in Original TMX: I’ve observed that beautiful girls usually have ugly boyfriends.  I think it deserves a revisit, in a special section of “Dear Marocharim” I call, “Dear Girl.”  Enjoy.)

Dear Girl, 

   It’s not that I’m physically attractive or anything, but I find myself baffled: why, Girl, in all your sexiness and prettiness, would you pair yourself with Guy who looks like he got savagely beaten with the ugly stick?  Why, Girl, in all your infinite wisdom and your smartness, would you pair yourself with Guy who is, for all intents and purposes, a two-legged hamster?  Why, Girl, in all your vainglorious beauty bedecked with Gucci blouses, Donna Karan jeans and Louis Vuitton handbags studded with Swarovski crystals, do you insist on loving Guy who looks like, well, shit?

   I know, I know: you’re beyond being attracted to a man physically.  You believe that, like magnetism, opposites attract.  You like to think of yourself as someone who values personality more than looks.  You are tired of being used as a sex-doll, a romantic trophy, an ornamental girlfriend by some jock from years ago, who apparently turned out to be in more than one gay orgy that involved bubbly foam.

   Don’t tell me you haven’t heard… I’ve also heard that they also had a serious homo daisy-chain at the staircase.

   No, I’m not jealous: in fact, I pity you.  You’re so beautiful, and your man is so ugly, that I can’t even fathom how you two look like having sex.  I can’t imagine what your children will look like.  What do you see in him?  Really: have you actually split his skull in half and saw his brains?  Have you performed a triple-bypass surgery on him to see what his heart looks like?

   Girl, I’m calling it like I see it: your boyfriend looks like shit.  I know you love him and all.  I don’t question the fact that you love him, but how could you have loved him anyway?  How could you have loved him with that cancer on his cheek that looks like a monkey is growing out of it?  How could you have loved him with that nose that looks like a giraffe’s left testicle?  How could you have loved him with that eyeball hanging from his left eye socket?

   Girl, I’ll never understand you.  And I hope against all hopes that I won’t.

Sincerely yours,

Marocharim

P.S.: I think that your boyfriend was behind your jock ex on that daisy-chain in the staircase.  And no, I wasn’t there.

   My uncle – who tonight left the Philippines to go back to work at Seattle – is thinking about putting up a business here instead of working abroad.  I made a joking suggestion about putting up a funeral parlor.  Surprisingly, he – along with my parents – look at it as a very good idea.

   In the indy movie Ataul for Rent, Joel Torre became rich – and mad – renting out coffins to his neighbors.  While Ataul is a good study in the nature of man, it led me to assume that there is profit in dead people.  For one, funeral parlors have a steady source of profit: people die all the time.  For two, we Filipinos spend so much in appeasing the souls of the reposed.  For three – and this is just me – I like the idea of driving a hearse.

   In my father’s hometown of La Union, “Joces” is a ubiquitous name: it is the most famous funeral parlor in Bauang, San Fernando City, and beyond.  What started out as a backyard funeral home turned into a multi-million peso family-owned franchise.  From what I’m told, Joces not only has a flexible payment rate, but it also rents out chairs and tents.  The people at Joces also provide free biscuit tins and brewed coffee to its clients to defray the costs of feeding mourners.

   (In case you think I “sold myself” to advertise a funeral home, I did that for free: nobody at Joces told me to write about them.  So there.)

   When my grandmother died a couple of years ago, I became very interested in the idea of being a mortician or a funeral director: even better yet, a driver of a hearse.  There’s something about driving a corpse around town in neutral gear.  While I’d prefer to stick my earphones in for anything other than “Hindi Kita Malilimutan.”