It appears that Celtics won and it appears that I care

All I could say about work is that it’s nice and convenient. All I could say about the people I work with is that they’re a smart and pleasant bunch. This is a good thing because I’m able to resist the urge to describe innocent people unflatteringly. But mostly, this is a good thing because I shut up about work and work people because It’s Dangerous And Not Nice to talk about about people behind their backs even though it’s very fun. I’m an invalid when it comes to pointing out people’s good qualities so mostly, I criticize even if I don’t have to. And it’s not that I really can’t resist but if there’s ONE thing noticeable about this new set of officemates is that as a group, they’re boring. Boring, as in they don’t go out to drink and for some strange reason, they all adore Starbucks, which I, on the other hand, don’t. But that’s it.

The best thing about the officemates though is that they leave me the hell alone. As far as they’re concerned, I’m just this boy who likes to keep to himself and who is uncharacteristically silent. And totally into chicks and basketball. Until yesterday, when I almost got caught reading a fag blog by a guy lunch buddy, of all people. It’s a big deal because you form a relationship with guys you regularly have lunch with, no matter how profoundly insignificant that relationship is.

Why is it that when I’m looking at something scandalous, someone always approaches and I have to act nervous and distracted. No one approaches me in those very rare occasions when I’m looking at NBA game highlights and when I’m googling rock bands which would so boost my profile as a pure blooded hetero. No, they have to be around when I’m youtubing my diva, Kathy G, when I’m making diskarte to log in on certain sites that could be very revelatory.

It was a close call but I don’t want to risk what I worked so hard for. It’s amusing how some people can be so daft at detecting sexuality but what’s more amusing is when I get teased with a female. Actually, it’s not that amusing and it kind of makes sense but mostly, it makes me feel safe. This wasn’t what I was reading when I got caught, but in the interest of keeping up appearances, if I had to read fag blogs because it can be boring in the office sometimes (all the time), it would be nice (and safe) if I’d have some shit to say about the NBA. Except that I can’t but I’ll try and it’s probably completely pointless and stupid.

I’m happy the Celtics won. I’m not even a fan of Pierce but that’s okay. I guess I’m sincerely glad Boston won. But everything I do lately seems like acts of precaution. But if I am truly serious about maintaining appearances, this should be nothing. Just in case somebody approaches my desk and I’m being inappropriate, the intruder will see this instead, not Yucky Gay Stuff. I’ll just have to scroll down really fast. Or I could just stop reading homo. But that would be so phony.

Mush pit

What I’ve been telling almost everyone who cares to hear about it is that ALL that could ever make me feel contented about NOW is if I would have a syota. I didn’t even intend for IT to be everything I want in a syota. I just want one. Just a living, breathing person who’d text me shit in the morning and in the evening, when the day is coming to a close and there’s no one and nothing. I just wanted to be typical, lame and sexually sated. The present situation isn’t even that bad but I am gifted at doing this: imagining that things are worse than they actually are. Which should explain the mania for intoxication. And the sharing to people who may or may not know or care what I’m on about.

Enter Light345934590. The syota I never really want and need but got. We have a convenient set-up. He lives in the same neighborhood and was not lame enough to ask me on the first meet if I am a fucker of fuckee because I seriously, truly, deeply despise being asked that shit because really, it DEPENDS on the person. These days, no one ever admits to being a bottom. Fags are still boys after all. But the desire to dump the he-bitch is so intense. He doesn’t deserve the treatment I usually reserve for people that I normally say shit about which means everyone. He doesn’t deserve to be called a he-bitch though he sometimes does. I am probably going to text him after this and tell him I’m shit. I’d probably tell him my decision to lead a life of peace and once told, he might just get an idea of how much BS he’s going to get if he sticks with me. Maybe I could sing him Baker Baker baking a cake so he’d vomit and leave and we’d both be guilt free. Maybe I could not sing and make him read this and make him vomit. I like saying VOMIT.

I don’t know what happened but I suddenly had preferences for once. Porn over actual sex. Friends over syota. Drink alone over drink with syota on a Friday night. Being deaf over hearing you say really nice things or really awful things about your day at work, My Syota. I must be growing up. Or I must be getting sicker. Or I really don’t like kids. Kids with decent looking meatsticks are okay but them and their meatsticks can only do so much. It’s not that I think I’m very mature and so above ANYONE. It’s not a crime to choose. Maybe I just don’t know how to proceed.

Non-events

It is supposed to be Independence Day today. But independence didn’t really happen on June 12. The actual date of ‘independence’ is July 4. The Macapagal bastards keep screwing around with our national holidays. They’re such bastards. Pinoys make a big deal out of the tiniest, almost insignificant events and non-events. We just don’t know any better.

Celebrate this non-independence day by commemorating another non-event that ‘happened’ in June 12, 1994, which is that supposed Blair Witch victim Joshua Leonard’s family released his supposed mix-tape of gloomy industrial music while on the trail for the Blair Witch. Unlike certain fake events celebrated on a national scale, the soundtrack to the Blair Witch Project movie is a work of true marketing and musical genius. Called Josh’s Blair Witch Mix, the CD is a haunting mix of excellently eerie sounds, perfect for whatever non-event you might wish to celebrate. Afghan Whigs, Type O Negative, Bauhaus and Lydia Lunch are some of the geniuses who contributed. This soundtrack, purportedly derived from ‘student filmmaker’ Josh’s mix tape, is about as authentic as the film, which is to say that it’s hokey. But it works. The Blair Witch Project movie and soundtrack are two convincing charades. Philippine Independence Day is not.

Kalbo!

There’s an adorable bald guy working at Tower Records Makati. I think it was him whose briefs I saw the other time I was there. You can tell if somebody’s worth the pamboboso by the kind of underwear he wears. And the length by which he’s willing to show. If he wears his jeans too low, he’s probably meaning to show some stuff. If his work costume’s too tiny, like a shirt that’s too tight or pants that are too showy, it’s hard not to guess that maybe they want to show more than just customer service.

Tower Records in Glorietta used to be pretty. It now looks shabby and untended. It has become so unappealing that I now associate it with underwear. Not that underwear on people isn’t appealing. I mean they’re no good for CD hunting anymore. The MP3 revolution is partly to blame. And iPod and iTunes. It used to be a three floor store. Now it’s just a tiny hole in the fringes of Glorietta 2. If I hadn’t been a barista I would have wanted to work at a Tower Records and I don’t care if we have to wear silly aprons. It looks like a fun job.

I was not looking for a hook-up when I met with Al, a Tori Amos-obsessed, semi-kalbo, 30-something guy. We agreed to meet on account of he was going to give me copies of all of his Tori Amos live recordings. The night before we met, we agreed that This Is Not Going To Be An EB. And it wasn’t. He really just gave me the CDs and I was profuse with the thanks and I thought that maybe he was really looking for a hook-up and that I turned out to be a big (tiny) disappointment which made him stick to the pact. It was the second best relationship I had with someone I’ve met over you-know-where.

It was reassuring to know that certain people are actually interested in the stuff that they talk about in forums. He gave me After the Rain, Blood Girl, VH1, MTV Unplugged and other live albums which I could never afford. He also turned out to be a lucky charm because I found Air’s Moon Safari and Sneaker Pimps’ Bloodpsort on Tower’s pre-owned section. I offered to treat him to a coffee and he declined. What a great guy. He kind of reminded me of what I might become when I GROW OLD. A little sad but impressed with myself because of the CDs. A gay Lloyd Dobbler.

Vexed in the city

So the reason why the Sex & the City movie was unashamedly and incompetently cut was due to the inadvertent collaboration of SM (a lousy, lousy mall), its stupid, non-exhibition of R-18 films rule, and MTRCB, that somewhat irrelevant branch of government/nunnery. These two institutions are so lucky. They’re able to fuck us up with the snap of their prissy, dirty, little fingers. The film’s distributor probably had a minor role but it’s completely unnecessary to snap at business organizations. It’s like scolding a 2 year old for pooping at will.

What may have happened was, fucking Shoe Mart, which should really stick to selling shoes, because of its R-18 films rule, kind of made the film distributors deem it necessary to have certain scenes and dialogues cut off so that the movie can pass as an R-13 fare, a decision which will ultimately decided by the almighty, sanctimonius MTRCB. Otherwise, SM cinemas, which are everywhere, will not show the film. First of all, most SM cinemas are awful. Why would anybody want to see movies there? People associated with the management of SM are clearly a highly unimaginative group of businessmen. They think that showing R-rated films will tarnish the ridiculously perceived reputation of the mall as a family-oriented place because the movies they exhibit have scenes that show kabastusan, an idea that is open to lots of interpretation. It’s an idea that is obviously lost on them. Aren’t they being bastos when they decide that certain artists’ works aren’t fit for public viewing?

But that manipulative shopping bully may not be the only culprit here. Maybe we also say nasty shit to MTRCB. Maybe we also say shit about the bobo distributors who subject movies to pointless censorship. They can take it. This movie, while not super awesome, is based from a very good TV show about sex. I would have preferred to talk about this excellent movie but I would so much rather have said shit about SM and stupid, rich business people and MTRCB doofuses. SATC is a good fucking movie. SM Malls, MTRCB, Distributors are shit.

Barista Diary

I’ve been in and out of jobs, hopped from one Ayala Avenue building to another, rode many elevators, and judged and smelled the people who got in the elevators. And corporate offices just can’t give me the kind of satisfaction that working in a coffee shop can. Being a barista has got to be one of the most interesting and slightly satisfying jobs I’ve had, and I’ve had quite a few. Plus it’s fun to say ‘I make coffee for a living’.

I’ve quit previous jobs for purely arbitrary reasons and having the benefit of a college diploma, I felt that seeking employment is not something that I should be worried about. I was under the brash impression that if I’m unable to find one, one will most likely find me. But I was smacked with the realization that having a diploma can and will eventually seem worthless compared to having an absolute and bankable talent because let’s face it, nobody cares that you had a nicely presented feasibility study while in college. While I haven’t been exactly a cocky employee, I had the gall to literally walk out of a high-paying job without so much as a goodbye to the manager or the obligatory passing of a resignation letter. I took off and actively decided to work as a barista. Experiencing a bit of desperation to find work, being a sweaty barista didn’t seem so bad.

It was a breath of fresh air to my collective working experience, having come from previously boring and unfulfilling jobs. And I believe that a person who had the nerve to walk out of a job lawfully earns the right to brand a particular job boring or unfulfilling as long as he’s able to at least express satisfaction to another. Otherwise, he’s just a slacker. I occasionally felt that I may have been coerced into becoming a barista since I felt that no decent employer would want to hire someone who permanently decides to get out of his cubicle as he pleases. But more than anything, I’d like to think of this unjustly branded coercion as a blessing in disguise. It was by no means an easy job but it was satisfying in a way that no other job on earth is. Being one of the most popular and most public of places, my coffee shop doubled as a place of work and a place to meet friends and dates. And even as it was implicitly stated by the management that flirting while working is punishable, there’d be baristas who’d feel duty-bound to turn on their charm and flirt like hell. It just seemed inevitable that as a barista I’d be serving more than just expensive, high calorie coffee. Looking back, I think I did serve some of my customers more than just coffee and that’s mostly because I didn’t feel like ruining tradition.

But being a barista requires more than just earnest smiles and proper I’m-a–college-graduate-too-although-I’m-serving-people-coffee diction. The hours are long and most of the time, it seemed long. Eventually, I felt that standing for almost straight 8 hours, manning cash registers and being asked to bus tables in perfect 10-minute intervals didn’t seem worth the supposed fun. It’s not that I’m too proud to clean after people, it’s just that in those moments of serious table busing, I was realizing that picking a career path that felt dubious at its conception is soon going to take its toll. And if I had known better, I would have exited sooner than I did, than be made to exit not entirely by choice but precisely because I have been terribly expressive about my growing dissatisfaction with what I’m doing. The novelty of saying, ‘I make coffee for a living’ has just worn off, and I couldn’t totally blame coffee for that surge of expression. People who run coffee shops are the height of perky so they notice things.

I returned to another Ayala Avenue office and since the cold in the office is nipple-numbing, coffee has become the perfect necessity and I have the perfect excuse to occasionally return to coffee shops and act annoyingly gushy, and it’s ok because coffee shops provide the ultimate platform for people who are distractingly effusive. But I don’t feel like being at coffee shops all of the time and there’s no way that I’d choose to work again as a barista (not that anyone would beg me to return), not having completely recovered from my semi-antagonistic departure. I know that the incessant job-hopping and the more than acceptable amount of caffeine intake has to stop but if things get shaky with my current employer, it is never too late to resort to certain acts of desperation which, if coupled with the right amount of perkiness, just might land me one of the most exciting jobs ever.

Nicer

It would have been really nice if I hadn’t known that certain people I know read this. I probably would have been twice as mean, twice as flamboyant and much, much less pretentious. If I were someone I know and I’m reading this, I’d probably call me the following day to tell me to fuck off and delete all the fakey, bloggey nonsense because it’s embarrassing. I wouldn’t feel the need to get at least slightly drunk when saying certain shit here so that if I read this the following morning, I wouldn’t have to convince me that It’s Okay Since I Wasn’t Myself last night, which is today. I find it hard to be embarrassed about this though. Most of the time, this seems like the kinds of things I’d say, the kind of thing I’d do in the streets if I wasn’t too busy being important. Tonight, for example, If I’m gonna be coy about it, which is how I should be about it, I wouldn’t admit to waiting for a certain boy to tell me he’s ready to be molested. But certain people I know, the ones who are likely to bother to call me and tell me to f off, might find that sick. So I say these instead and end the nonsense because molestee already called.