This column may contain strong language, sexual content, adult humor, and other themes that may not be suitable for minors. Parental guidance is strongly advised
Dear Abby
I married this guy, Diggy AKA Rudeboy, in haste after dumping my fiancé of six years, Pinny. Yes, I know, we have very strange names in the Philippines. But bear with me, please.
Pinny was okay. He wasn’t the most attentive boyfriend; most nights he just played those damned video games of his and I just sat there like an idiot, being ignored. Sometimes I would even have a massage right there, draped in nothing but a towel, my flesh being kneaded with oil, and he wouldn’t even react! Not only that, he went on and on and on about his parents, about his father being murdered. Okay, tragic but enough already! So six years was the absolute limit of my patience.
But, I have to say, Pinny was a pretty decent CEO, when I think about it. He got so many foreign investors pouring money into his companies, they had so much confidence in him. He weeded out the accountants fudging the books and skimming off profits for themselves and got them thrown into jail. He even provided free reproductive health education, not to mention contraception to his employees. In a country like ours, that is MAJOR.
So, yeah, he wasn’t all that bad. But he was, well, he was a bit DULL. I still wanted excitement in my life. But you know what Pinny did? He said he wanted me to be happy, so he thought of setting me up with his friend Manro. Yes, Manro, not Monroe. Well, Manro was slightly more exciting than Pinny, but it wasn’t enough. I was ready for change.
Then Diggy came along promising just that, change. Excitement. A new life. And, I believed that he was authentic—he told me so—and that he was a straight-shooter, an I-say-what-I-say-I-mean-what-I-say kind of guy with the big heart who came from a small town, with little patience for the bright lights of the big city. The proof was as plain as the plaid shirts he wore. And the way he kept cursing everyone and everything about “Imperial Manila.”
So we married after a whirlwind courtship. My family and my friends warned me he wouldn’t treat me fairly. He would be an autocratic kind of husband, ordering me around, and not tolerate any kind of dissent. Could I, an independent, intelligent woman—not much evolved from the Neanderthals, they said—accept him?
Well, Rudeboy told me he would tone it down after we married. He was just playing the macho caveman so he could win his woman. Well, I said, that was a Darwinian take on marriage. He got—let’s just say he got tetchy, called me the son of a whore, which confused me because, duh, it’s pretty obvious I got those XX chromosomes going on, you know? Then he told me to stop listening to Western so-called experts who wanted to maintain their imperial stranglehold on my mind, and listen to the Chinese instead, who were Asian, like us and just a jetski ride away.
Then he said, “Can’t you take a joke?”
Anyway, we got married, and 16 million people signed the marriage certificate. Talk about giving landslide approval.
We barely even had a honeymoon and he went off on this shooting spree along with his bodyguard, eliminating everyone they suspected of—I don’t know—even looking at me or talking to me or having a crush on me or even slighting me in some form or another! Without any proof! And I’m talking about real killings, not the Grand Theft Auto scenario like Pinny used to play.
My 16 million new friends kept telling me not to worry, that Rudeboy was just and fair and compassionate, and that when you get married and start a new life together, you need to cleanse your home of any kind of negativity left over from the past.
My old friends—Barry, Hillary, Ban-Ki among them—were starting to worry about me. It was time for an intervention, they said. So they invited us to Laos. Rudeboy was keen—right beside the killing fields, he exclaimed. Perfect example of American foreign policy failure, he gloated.
I had to tell him that Barry was pretty worried about me, and how I seemed to be losing sight of who I really was. My moral compass was a bit warped, Barry noticed. I was accepting as normal things that shouldn’t be normal. Even the businesses I’d set up from when Pinny was giving me great financial advice were suffering; my overseas investors all pulled out.
Well, Rudeboy went ballistic when I kind of mentioned Barry’s concerns.
“That son of a whore!” he screamed at the airport, right at the departure gate. “He’d better not bring that up when I see him or I’ll give him a piece of my mind! I don’t give a f*ck what he thinks, I can eat him for breakfast or throw him into Manila Bay to fatten the fish!”
It put a damper on our trip, I have to be honest. And made me see my husband in a different light. I mean, I’m all for letting your feelings out and not bottling them inside, but an expletive-riddled outburst against one of my best friends in an airport before boarding a full flight? I just wasn’t brought up to tolerate that kind of crassness! And yet when Bu-Lee his Chinese friend won’t even let Rudeboy fish in his own pond, my husband’s all, “he-he-he, with Bu-Lee, I just have to ask nicely and he’ll let me. He’ll even build a new fence around my pond to protect it.”
“Why haven’t you done anything about Bu-Lee’s brother Na Kaw-Lee?” I asked my husband. “He took me out to dinner once and you know, he could have given me everything, Hermés bags galore, but I chose you. Why haven’t you gone after him? You even let him leave the country?”
“You naman,” he replied, licking his lips suggestively. “Maganda ka, but you don’t know how to take a joke!”
Well guess what, Barry told his staffers there was really no point in meeting with Rudeboy, nothing positive would really come out of it.
Dear Abby, I can’t do this anymore. So here’s my question: How can I go on being married to a man who doesn’t even know that when you wear a single-breasted suit you leave the lower button undone?
Is it too late now to say sorry?
Yours truly,
Married in Haste
Dear Married in Haste,
I would suggest updating your playlist to POTUS’ banging 2016 summer playlist, and put “I’m the man who are you, muthaf*cka” from Classic Man on repeat.
Otherwise, you’re pretty much f*cked for the next five years and nine months unless the new Divorce Bill is signed into law.
Yeah, right, who am I kidding? You’re f*cked.
Next time listen to the 26 million who didn’t sign your marriage certificate.
Abby
B. Wiser is the author of Making Love in Spanish, a novel published earlier this year by Anvil Publishing and available in National Book Store and Powerbooks, as well as online. When not assuming her Sasha Fierce alter-ego, she takes on the role of serious journalist and media consultant.
For comments and questions, e-mail b.wiser.ph@gmail.com.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in her private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of Preen.ph, or any other entity of the Inquirer Group of Companies.
Art by Dorothy Guya
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