this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on January 10, 1998.
The trouble with hating math as a subject in school is that you’ll never realize you’re 27 until you are trapped in a rare period of introspection, which has a way of coaxing you to engage in the detestable task of serious mental calculation.
It took a rumored workers’ strike in the Makati company where I work to remind me of my hapless age. Our boss suspended our operations for two days, something which everyone greeted with glee. With office buddies going on their own personal retreat, I was left with nobody to paint the town red with, except my own tired shadow. The unexpected hiatus has a way of jolting you about life’s essentials – which you have not paid attention to for sometime. Like your age. I am hopelessly bored. That’s my concluding statement about my turning 27 while managing to remain single all these years. There’s something about the age that drives you straddling the thin line between the threshold of insanity and an exhausted view of reality. You feel like you’re too jaded for the usual things like birthday cakes and presents from friends, yet too wary to take that further step into the terrible 30s. Don’t even think about it – turning 30.
I am bored with a job that wouldn’t suit me, the 9 to 5 routine of mind-numbing robotics. I am bored with plain Janes and familiar faces. I’ve grown inured to predictable movies and some despicable TV shows and reruns, and enervated by alternative rock music which has gone mainstream and heavy metal which has gone stale. I am numbed by the daily urban grind, from the monotonously ugly landscape, the garish billboards and unsightly flyovers, down to the newly minted coins which lack character and lose market value by the day. Sometimes, even the night scene drives me world-weary. And I’m finding it hard to bear the thought of having no one to come home to.
I couldn’t care less about the headlines either. Rising prices and demands for salary increase? So what’s new? Elections? Who cares? I won’t vote anyway. Show biz scandals? Hohum. I couldn’t even sit in on a basketball game, live or otherwise. And unlike teens lusting for life, I don’t even allow retro fashion, which is now all the rage, to ensnare gullible me as a willing victim like before; I am more careful now, wearing what I think to be classic. Classic, but hopefully not Jurassic.
On the domestic front, I find it hard to rise up to the fierce demands of independence: unpaid bills, dirty clothes piling up, cobwebs crystallizing on the ceiling. Trying to be a good Catholic seems to make it even harder, illicit sex is out of the question. So is suicide and killing sprees. Sleaze and porn are disgustingly tasteless, anyway; besides, watching a skin flick is as breathtaking as opening a can of sardines for dinner. Drugs and booze are likewise passe for me. And I don’t dig Kurt Cobain’s “ultimate act of cool.”
So how did I fight off ennui sans mortal sin the Monday I was out of work, penniless and left with the only option of verging out at my rented apartment? Let me count the wastes? First, to set the tone for the day, I found myself craving for something macabre to the nostrils like durian or to the taste buds like that weird champoy which tasted like a glob or sot, having wrongly nestled in some forgotten recesses of the ref. Don’t ask me what I had for lunch. Brazilian samba tape which dutifully spiced up the neigborhood air full of blah. Soon after joining the Mardi Gras in Rio, I tried out to the diva Maria Callas who initially sounded nothing but caterwauling to my still-uncultured ears. Where is my Armani suit for the gala performance? Although they were also quite strange to me, I knew Gregorian Chants and Pachelbel would leave me snoring, so I chucked them in favor of Blackbox and fancied myself dancing under imaginary strobe lights. Perspiring yet not fully sated with that, I turned the rundown apartment into a bar by alternately playing Earth, Wind and Fire and Al Jareau. I nearly drew out the jigger from the cupboard for that de rigueur tequila shot. So much for that jazzed up feeling. Later in the day I tried reading materials I never dared touch before. I tried reading Kurt Vonnegut but his sarcasm got my goat; it matched my own. Hemingway I found exceedingly macho while Dostoevsky, manic-depressive and too intellectual. Maybe I should stop pretenses and just down-age and pick up the funnies such as Calvin and Hobbes. Running out of novel things to do, I turned to “Les Miserables” which I cringed at and have never dared playing before. I essayed the role of Marius and the harsh life of the barricades. Or did I prefer Valjean? In the afternoon, I shifted to mushy, musty songs of romance for comfort. Or so I thought. I knew boredom to be a prelude to depression the minute I was led by the mawkish notion to dig deep into memory to bring up for air a string of failed loves and past hurts.
Suddenly, I missed my friends, my family, my former schoolmates. Where is everybody? Can someone give me a ring and check out whether I’m still alive? Suddenly, I pined for the security and comforts of home. I found myself irrationally plunging headlong to an all-time emotional low. Providentially, a brighter if saner idea popped into my head, saving me from certain death: Fight boredom with boredom and the two should cancel out. Wash away boredom with a task that was even more boring and things would cease to be boring. So with an edified heart, I dragged my indolence to the lavatory, confronted my clothes hamper, and wallowed in the next three hours or so washing and scrubbing away dirt upon unexciting dirt. I remember washing the pinstripe long sleeves I wore with put-on confidence the day I trained new hires and taught them that the secret to a better workplace was love. I remember washing the plain white shirt I had on during a free acting workshop given by someone from Peta, an activity which I joined in my vain attempt to “have some life.” I remember washing the dull, grey polo I slipped on when I sleuthed as an evaluator of a Chinese fast food, as some kind of part-time job. I remember washing the light-blue polo and khaki slacks which I think matched stylishly that night when I danced in abandon, together with officemates, during one of Streetlife’s nightly revelry last weekend. Each grimy piece bore the mark of late-20s ennui, the need to break the monotony, the lack of focus and motivation while slugging it out in an increasingly technological society, the disillusionment from the parody that is Philippine politics, and the chronic fear of an unstable global economy. Eventually I rinsed each with a pleased heart, thinking that my world-weariness was going down the drain[B1] together with all the suds and dirt. The rinsing part brought some kind of spiritual renewal. Swoosh. I felt purged.
And then it came to my mind that, maybe, the best answer to all my present ills was far simpler than juxtaposing two negatives to come up with a positive. All I had to do was, first, take a shower, and next, continue my search for the Elusive One, and, eventually, settle down. Let me repeat that: I think it’s about time I settled down. To heck with all the rising prices. At least it would be easier to live in misery if you’re not alone at it. On second thought, maybe this has been the price of not heeding my true calling, whatever that is. With a contrite heart, maybe I should humbly accept the consequences. Like paying the price of having taken math for granted. Your punishment will not let up until it gets easier for you to do the basic operations, i.e., until you turn 30 where it is again fairly easier to keep track of the marching years.
