Becoming Bobby

One day, Justin and I talked about our future. We were concerned about who we would eventually become when we hit out 30s. Justin, by the way, is a cousin and sort of friend with whom I have nothing in common except for the fact that we share the same disdain for some relatives. In our somewhat sprawling family, he is the only one that I can talk to about how extremely messed up our relatives are. Justin and I dislike our burgis cousins who think they’re more pogi than us. We dislike our titos and titas who have so much because we on the other hand have little. We find bondage in beer and hatred, I guess you could say.

So far,  christmas has done nothing for me. It’s a concrete thing, Christmas, and it’s not supposed to do anybody any favor but I don’t like it anyway. It stopped being interesting about 3-4 years ago when soliciting money from relatives ceased to be the type of activity someone my age is supposed to do. Everything has just been terrible this year and I wish to get out of it already. It’s really been a bad life in 2009. Actually I have nothing substantial to say about me and Justin and our future-gazing moment, it just didn’t seem too bad to say that you dislike certain people in your family because who doesn’t?, instead of flat out saying life is not good now. Christmas season’s been dreadful for me because it’s in December and in December, it’s just hell at work although I’m Grateful I Have Work because it’s hard for some people who are hopelessly jobless. It’s especially tough for unskilled, untalented jobless people but persevering, complaining, untalented types have it tough too. I’m just saying. I can’t win at anything!

If we’re lucky, our pesky titos will leave us alone today and allow us the luxury of getting drunk hassle-free. If we’re lucky, they would completely ignore us or just me, and not ask questions to which answers they don’t really care to know. It’s actually amusing and sometimes fun to be interrogated and it’s really not a big deal and I’m just really filling space and creating something to complain about. I should really be making plans now because much as I despise christmas, I don’t want to fill the rest of the day thinking about things I have no control over. What to drink later and how much, these are things I have total control over. I should ditch the fuck-the-relatives act which is really a half-assed act and head to the dirtiest city in Manila and Make Plans.

Titos will parade in front of us today for our scrutinizing pleasure and displeasure and we’d see who we’d really soon become because  on previous discussions, I dreaded becoming that tito whose life I absolutely, undoubtedly mirror. I can not be this tito. Justin though, he hadn’t seemed to have any qualms about being like several of the wasted, ambiguous lifestyle-living titos because he lives differently. And I mean differently. He could one day turn out to be Mon, the married, plain-living, good-looking in his early 30s, fun, cool with the nieces Tito and be happy and contented not for sticking to the Good Life but because he got away with the cruelties of the inevitable cruelties that his previous lifestyle he’s maintained. Or we thought, he could be the drug addict tito of which we have a lot and grow up to be an… addict, although he swears he won’t do drugs, just smokes of the highest kind. Me, even if the evidence is crystal clear, will become that tito. I’m already him, in a way: won’t marry (at least not today or next year), sustained by coffee, wants little company, openly critical and hopeful. He’s not bad but I hope I become Mon instead.